initial commit of ebook 17690HEADmain

19 files changed, 48806 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/17690-8.txt b/17690-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d98f4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,16287 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Master of Appleby, by Francis Lynde,
+Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Master of Appleby
+       A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
+
+
+Author: Francis Lynde
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2006  [eBook #17690]
+Last Updated: December 27, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Clare Coney, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17690-h.htm or 17690-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690/17690-h/17690-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690/17690-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MASTER OF APPLEBY
+
+A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with
+the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but
+Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two
+Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
+
+by
+
+FRANCIS LYNDE
+
+Illustrations by T. de Thulstrup
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright 1902
+The Bowen-Merrill Company
+October
+
+
+
+
+
+                    TO
+          Mr. Edward G. Richmond
+        OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,
+     WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
+       MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY
+         REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR
+           THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
+                 INSCRIBED
+
+
+
+[Illustration: But now I was fronting death and could be as firm as
+she]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+      I   I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD                              1
+
+     II   KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS                            15
+
+    III   MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST                                25
+
+     IV   MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY                           36
+
+      V   I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED                       47
+
+     VI   RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND                           60
+
+    VII   MY LADY HATH NO PART                                 75
+
+   VIII   I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY                         88
+
+     IX   A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR                         98
+
+      X   A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF                        107
+
+     XI   A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH                       114
+
+    XII   THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS                     129
+
+   XIII   A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS                                 141
+
+    XIV   THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR                    150
+
+     XV   A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP                      164
+
+    XVI   JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH                    171
+
+   XVII   LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP                        183
+
+  XVIII   WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH                         194
+
+    XIX   A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS                   207
+
+     XX   WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE                      217
+
+    XXI   WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE                228
+
+   XXII   THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR                   235
+
+  XXIII   WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS                   251
+
+   XXIV   WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY                          259
+
+    XXV   UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR                    269
+
+   XXVI   THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE                       279
+
+  XXVII   A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL                   287
+
+ XXVIII   I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE                             296
+
+   XXIX   HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER                     309
+
+    XXX   EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES                324
+
+   XXXI   WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH                              336
+
+  XXXII   I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET                             351
+
+ XXXIII   I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS                            361
+
+  XXXIV   I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN                    369
+
+   XXXV   I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE                         376
+
+  XXXVI   I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS                  382
+
+ XXXVII   WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK                         395
+
+XXXVIII   WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER                               412
+
+  XXXIX   THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS                         418
+
+     XL   VAE VICTIS                                          432
+
+    XLI   I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE                446
+
+   XLII   MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS                     454
+
+  XLIII   I DRINK A DISH OF TEA                               460
+
+   XLIV   WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END                 470
+
+    XLV   WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT                        480
+
+   XLVI   OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES              488
+
+  XLVII   ARMS AND THE MAN                                    505
+
+ XLVIII   WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY                            517
+
+   XLIX   A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE                               531
+
+      L  RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID                    549
+
+     LI  THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT                       562
+
+    LII   BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END                      573
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD
+
+
+The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
+brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.
+
+'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
+calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
+west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
+higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
+lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
+shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
+once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.
+
+Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
+to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
+pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
+the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
+exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
+arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
+rejoicing.
+
+The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
+valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
+see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
+where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
+provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
+London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
+rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
+cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
+service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
+courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.
+
+Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
+had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
+in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
+and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
+had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
+than yesterweek--this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
+must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
+doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
+and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:
+
+"I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
+Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
+Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?"
+
+It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
+his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
+gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
+courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
+stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
+I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: "At your
+service, sir."
+
+Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
+packet.
+
+"From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
+captain in his Majesty's German Legion," he announced, with stern
+dignity.
+
+Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
+Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
+some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
+the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
+he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
+kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
+event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
+November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
+first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
+say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.
+
+"I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet," I
+demurred, when I had read the challenge. "He spoke slightingly of a
+lady, and I did but--"
+
+"Your answer, Captain Ireton!" quoth my youngster, curtly. "I am not
+empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations."
+
+"Not so fast, if you please," I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint
+your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
+sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
+with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
+shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
+of any other breed."
+
+At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.
+
+"If you can," he qualified. "But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
+I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
+you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
+gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's wit."
+
+Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
+I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
+otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
+as well as I might.
+
+Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
+presently a bit of cold deer's meat and some cakes of maize bread
+baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
+sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries of the Indian scuppernong, to
+wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
+mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
+cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.
+
+It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
+the day in Queensborough.
+
+"Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
+post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
+in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
+harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
+as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
+Catawba."
+
+"So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
+take it."
+
+Jennifer eyed me curiously. "Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
+no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
+Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North."
+
+"De Kalb?" I suggested.
+
+Again the curious eyeshot. "Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
+though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
+about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg."
+
+"I? What should I know?"
+
+"You know a deal--or else the gossips lie most recklessly."
+
+"They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
+other of the patriot side. What are they saying?"
+
+"That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia--to see what
+you can see."
+
+"A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
+the oath on either side."
+
+He looked vastly disappointed. "But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
+to think twice in such a cause?"
+
+"As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine."
+
+"Now God Save us, John Ireton!" he burst out in a fine fervor of
+youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, "I had never
+thought to hear your father's son say the like!"
+
+I shrugged.
+
+"And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
+his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
+declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
+landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
+seat."
+
+Jennifer shrugged in his turn.
+
+"Gilbert Stair--for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it--Gilbert
+Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
+this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
+course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
+skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
+and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
+Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
+him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
+private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped--"
+
+I laid a hand on his knee. "Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
+Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
+rendezvous."
+
+For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
+he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
+some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.
+
+"Softly, my lad," I said; "'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
+my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
+ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
+the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?"
+
+He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
+harder at his pipe.
+
+"I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
+powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
+again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
+to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and--and--"
+
+He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.
+
+"Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
+stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
+its scabbard, I'll be bound."
+
+"You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less," he confessed,
+shamefacedly. "'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
+blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
+little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
+order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
+and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
+blue should never look upon her face again with her good will."
+
+I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
+somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
+possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
+homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
+mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
+all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
+frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
+happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
+need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
+love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
+was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.
+
+"Dost love her, Dick?" I asked.
+
+"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
+Master Wytheby's school."
+
+"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."
+
+"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
+then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
+would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
+the thing it is."
+
+"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
+leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
+meant.
+
+"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
+the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
+doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
+enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
+to go, or die of shame!"
+
+He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
+campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.
+
+By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
+apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.
+
+"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
+happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
+to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
+Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
+over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."
+
+"As how?" I inquired.
+
+"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
+Falconnet was for having us make the duel _à outrance_. But that's
+beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
+serve him now."
+
+"'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
+the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
+captain."
+
+"True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
+its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?"
+
+Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
+of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip--gossip about a tale
+which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
+grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
+hap in fencing with words.
+
+"The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
+in passing."
+
+Jennifer laughed.
+
+"And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
+carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
+light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?"
+
+"Who should know that better than--" I was fairly on the brink of
+betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. "I care not
+if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before--and with a
+good swordsman now and then."
+
+"Anan?" said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this
+toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
+lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
+own affairs?"
+
+"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
+asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
+she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."
+
+"Young?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
+mayhap I can name her for you."
+
+"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
+painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
+with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
+witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
+it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle."
+
+To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
+the fire.
+
+"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
+Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"
+
+I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
+are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
+quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
+the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."
+
+"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"
+
+"No; the quarrel is mine."
+
+"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
+fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"
+
+I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
+mystery.
+
+"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
+daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."
+
+"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.
+
+"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
+fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
+you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."
+
+"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events,
+I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
+cause."
+
+"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"
+
+"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
+and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
+Falconnet's next friend.
+
+"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
+may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
+shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
+is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"
+
+At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
+Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
+as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--
+
+"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.
+
+He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
+he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
+outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
+I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.
+
+"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
+now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
+but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
+Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."
+
+After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
+horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
+maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
+of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
+somber reminders.
+
+I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
+Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
+chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
+Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
+battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.
+
+I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
+strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
+and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
+are in order against their time of using.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS
+
+
+It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
+father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
+Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
+best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
+Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
+my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
+
+Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in those
+days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
+guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
+home from garrison duty in the Canadas.
+
+Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
+wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
+less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
+good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
+down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
+that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
+less to my score than others had to theirs.
+
+It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
+his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
+my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
+clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
+of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
+
+As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
+not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
+lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
+purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
+the _jeunesse dorée_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
+rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
+was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
+purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.
+
+Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
+not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
+comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
+the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
+merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
+when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
+
+As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
+affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
+Carolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--I
+should there and then have called the slayer to his account.
+
+How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
+been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"
+as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
+figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
+the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
+this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
+and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
+of oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherers
+and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any
+honest gentleman to oppose them.
+
+What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken in
+arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth
+receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.
+With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and
+a few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated at
+the Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
+
+When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had no
+heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and
+reward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw
+up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,
+and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, was
+lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old
+field-marshal on the Turkish frontier.
+
+To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches
+and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news
+traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in
+the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of
+the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and
+from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolina
+was still another year.
+
+What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trot
+thence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.
+Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long
+faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve
+as mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, with
+slow-match well alight for its firing.
+
+Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were already
+widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was
+that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into
+Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was
+made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration
+of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment
+by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
+
+You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was
+chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands
+the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
+
+Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne
+of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest
+of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,
+in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father
+knew all the metes and bounds of it.
+
+I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was
+told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when
+he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not
+yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to
+the son.
+
+It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert
+Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat
+at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with
+his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was
+Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
+
+For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew
+not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and
+profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be
+minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish
+border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and
+swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on
+these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I
+became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of
+wrath.
+
+On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path
+that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path
+to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by
+time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy
+days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill
+glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up
+under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of
+blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
+
+Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when I
+had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients
+now--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had
+been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that
+lay between, he knew me at once.
+
+Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small
+portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks
+were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger
+Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,
+on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place,
+Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned
+deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,
+a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf
+torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
+
+     _My Son:_
+
+     _I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and
+     my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We
+     have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
+     to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
+     bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
+     devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
+     Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
+     cause of liberty._
+
+     _Thy father,_
+          _Roger Ireton._
+
+
+
+You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
+heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
+summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
+learned what I have here set down of my father's end.
+
+The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
+if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
+the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
+the bearings of the nearest patriot force.
+
+'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
+for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
+light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
+invasion--so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
+Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
+in instant readiness for fight or flight.
+
+Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far
+from Lord Cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the Wateree,
+I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good
+reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
+embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
+Charlotte.
+
+I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
+and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
+Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
+She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
+women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
+lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
+for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
+moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
+proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.
+
+A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
+tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
+lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
+quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
+of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
+bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
+tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
+bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.
+
+Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
+act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though
+nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
+Richard Coverdale.
+
+"So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning
+over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
+and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
+would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
+page here for you.
+
+"Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain;
+and then I took two strides to front him fairly.
+
+"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and,
+lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
+like an ox in the shambles.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST
+
+
+True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
+of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
+the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.
+
+After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful
+enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his
+second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken
+with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one
+of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried
+shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.
+
+It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool
+and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which
+washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink
+to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the
+bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the
+fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing. On the right the river,
+late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the
+waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of
+our horses there were none. Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of
+nature's morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught
+remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the
+countryside. Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for
+Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.
+
+"Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot
+tempest of ours," he said. "But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial
+savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly. The
+post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel
+Tarleton's doings. 'Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln's
+reinforcements come too late. They gave battle but faint-heartedly,
+being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and
+begged for quarter--begged, and were cut down as they stood."
+
+"Faugh!" said I. "That is but hangman's work. And yet in London I heard
+that this same Colonel Tarleton was with Lord Howe in Philadelphia and
+was made much of by the ladies."
+
+Jennifer's laugh was neither mirthful nor pleasant.
+
+"'Tis a weakness of the sex," he scoffed. "The women have a fondness for
+a man with a dash of the brute in him."
+
+I laughed also, but without bitterness.
+
+"You say it feelingly. Do you speak by the book?"
+
+"Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all
+manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this
+baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but
+a pattern of his brutal colonel."
+
+I put two and two together.
+
+"So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?"
+
+"Oh, surely. Gilbert Stair keeps open house for any and all of the
+winning hand, as I told you."
+
+The thought of this unspoiled young maiden having aught to do with such
+a thrice-accursed despoiler of women made my blood boil afresh; and in
+the heat of it I let my secret slip, or rather some small part of it.
+
+"Sir Francis had ever a sure hand with the women," I said; and then I
+could have bitten my masterless tongue.
+
+"So?" queried Jennifer. "Then this is not your first knowing of him?"
+
+"No." So much I said and no more.
+
+We rode on in silence for a little space, and then my youthling must
+needs break out again in fresh beseechings.
+
+"Tell me what you know of him, and what it was he said of Madge," he
+entreated. "You can't deny me now, Jack."
+
+"I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has
+been."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him
+through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all
+men--and all women, as well."
+
+"God speed you," quoth my loyal ally. "I knew not your quarrel with him
+was so bitter."
+
+"It is to the death."
+
+"So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he--"
+
+I divined what he would say and broke in upon him.
+
+"Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I
+know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be
+sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have
+seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old
+regiment of the Blues."
+
+"Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he
+shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
+know not what it was he said."
+
+I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
+hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.
+
+"Indifferent well."
+
+"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
+hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
+guinea at ten paces."
+
+From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
+rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
+came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
+Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
+cases as he drew rein.
+
+"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
+spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
+deploying into the road as to surround us.
+
+"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"
+
+"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
+Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
+since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"
+
+"Aye,--standing, if need be."
+
+"Then at them, in God's name. Charge!"
+
+It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my
+old field-marshal's maxim, _Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu
+zerschmettern_; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did
+strike both first and hard.
+
+A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to
+guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.
+In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered
+instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we
+came to the steel.
+
+It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced
+blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the
+half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me
+room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to
+death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.
+
+"Over with you!" I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him
+down with a great scythe handled as a sword.
+
+Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for
+the race beyond. When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were
+safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.
+
+There was no cost worth counting. A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me,
+and the back of Jennifer's sword hand scored lightly across by another
+of the random missiles summed up our woundings. Dick whipped out his
+kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if
+any Tory cared to follow.
+
+"Lord, Jack! I owe you one to keep and one to pay back," quoth my
+youngster, warmly. "I never saw a swordsman till this day!"
+
+"Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn
+them. And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools. The
+two with swords had little wit to use them."
+
+"Oh, come!" said he. "I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.
+If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach
+me some of these 'mere tricks' of yours."
+
+I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the
+distance.
+
+"Dick, you passed this way an hour ago; was that breastwork in the road
+then?"
+
+"Not a stick of it."
+
+"Then we may dare say our volunteer captain fights unwillingly."
+
+"How so?" he demanded, being much too straightforward himself to suspect
+duplicity in others.
+
+"'Tis plain enough. This was a trap, meant to stop or delay us, and I'll
+wager high it was the baronet who set and baited it. It would please him
+well to be able to say what our failure to come would give him warrant
+for. Let us gallop a bit, lest we be late and so play into his hand."
+
+Jennifer smiled grimly and gave his horse the rein. "I think you'd
+charge the Fall of Man to him if that would give you better leave to
+kill him. I'd hate to own you for my enemy, John Ireton."
+
+For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous
+under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking
+up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton,
+fair of skin and ruddy of face.
+
+If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment
+at its failure. His face, dark and inscrutable as it always was, was
+made more sinister by the plasters knitting up his broken cheek, but I
+was right glad to make sure that my blow had spared his eyes. Richly as
+he deserved his fate, I thought it would be ill to think on afterward
+that I had had him at a disadvantage of my own making.
+
+There was little time wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us
+he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to
+Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring
+and balancing of weapons, and then Richard came back.
+
+"The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and
+is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords
+which he offers. Will you change your terms?"
+
+"No; I am content to fight with my own weapon."
+
+Jennifer nodded. "So I told him." And then: "There was no surgeon to be
+had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.
+Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings
+to fight without one."
+
+"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with
+them and be at it."
+
+Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose
+the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to
+give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm
+which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my
+own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade,
+straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who
+strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the
+plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but
+devilish.
+
+The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I
+stopped him.
+
+"One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?"
+
+The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied
+smoothly.
+
+"Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor."
+
+"'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied
+to Richard Coverdale nine years agone," said I; and then I signed
+Jennifer to give the word.
+
+"Attention, gentlemen! On guard!"
+
+My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard
+another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a
+bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I
+heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and
+the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at
+me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.
+
+Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that
+he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal
+well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my
+advantage he had pricked me lightly with that extra inch of slender
+point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier
+weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and
+lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should
+have him.
+
+Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for
+on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well
+cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in
+my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of
+hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.
+
+I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did
+likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a
+hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.
+
+In the very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
+to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire prick of
+the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
+stood.
+
+Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
+hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
+fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
+through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
+full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I
+do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
+point. Can I say more?"
+
+How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
+aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
+glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
+blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
+with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY
+
+
+When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
+in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
+oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
+shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
+soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
+I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
+counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
+faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
+hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
+boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
+or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.
+
+At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
+an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
+fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
+and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
+on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
+David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
+softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.
+
+I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
+opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
+stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
+great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
+been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.
+
+Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
+a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
+should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
+of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.
+
+She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the
+sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,
+with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one
+that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action;
+but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April
+sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.
+
+I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting
+the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made
+sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles
+scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking
+lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look
+of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in
+the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held
+the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple,
+care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were
+frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of
+glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.
+
+Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish
+beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old
+field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand
+in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of
+them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and
+furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.
+
+What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the
+subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be
+wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for
+the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her
+and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in
+my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in
+earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well
+worth any penalty.
+
+At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and
+stood beside me.
+
+"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the
+thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her
+voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.
+"They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"
+
+I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I
+said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."
+
+At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile
+like that she had flung to Falconnet.
+
+"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the
+sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French
+of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's
+officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"
+
+"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked
+where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the
+answer to both questions.
+
+In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess,
+steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.
+
+"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because
+there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard
+Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with
+Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"
+
+I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the
+German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from
+me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should
+thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my
+enemy and his second to share the burden of me.
+
+"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.
+
+"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to
+my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your
+wound dressed?"
+
+She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to
+hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as
+little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field,
+and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's
+hands.
+
+"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the
+wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel
+with Sir Francis?"
+
+"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my
+foolish tongue.
+
+"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the
+town, and that says--"
+
+"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it
+stand so."
+
+"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this
+unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"
+
+Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to
+answer her. But I could not let it go thus.
+
+"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to
+turn her safe aside.
+
+"Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me."
+
+"Nay, that I may not."
+
+Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she
+laughed.
+
+"'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the
+telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?"
+
+Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for
+jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of
+her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on
+drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and
+yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any
+tender-hearted woman might.
+
+"There," she said; "'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are
+glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it
+heals."
+
+"And how long will that be, think you?"
+
+"We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for
+your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton."
+
+With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from
+lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again.
+When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.
+
+After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands,
+and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she,
+or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius,
+and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound.
+From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from
+Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually
+going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.
+
+Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love
+me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange
+that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his
+unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other
+things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir
+Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and
+going.
+
+But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was
+the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's
+loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had
+finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's
+militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory
+stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.
+
+With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of
+the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and
+with her cheeks aflame.
+
+"Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which,
+failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!" she cried. "Was
+it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending
+this headstrong boy to his death?"
+
+Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had
+sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found
+no thong to cut so deep.
+
+"God help me!" I groaned. "Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?"
+
+"No, he is not dead," she confessed, relenting a little. "But he has the
+baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas
+disagreement with Sir Francis."
+
+I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but
+the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for
+the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad
+enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.
+
+"Why don't you speak, sir?" she snapped, flying out at me in a passion
+for my lack of words.
+
+"What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me
+ungenerous."
+
+"You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon
+for calling my father's guest hard names."
+
+"The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it
+was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair."
+
+At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never
+heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be
+on the forgiving hand.
+
+"Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other
+could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same
+breath." Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and
+she sighed and said: "Poor Dick!"
+
+As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the
+sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that
+curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must
+straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I
+should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: "He loves you well,
+Mistress Margery."
+
+She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or
+loving; I could not tell which it was.
+
+"Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?"
+
+Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of
+mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy
+disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she
+laughed again.
+
+"Oh, you do amuse me mightily, _mon Capitaine_," she cried. "I do
+protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!"
+
+"Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?" I asked, glad of any
+excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.
+
+"No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great
+world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should
+tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?"
+
+Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she
+came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished
+suddenly and she spoke softly.
+
+"I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always
+to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of
+practice."
+
+How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most
+highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had
+given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me
+could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
+I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
+little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.
+
+From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
+those same Huguenot _émigrés_; and when I looked not at her I could
+speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
+looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
+knew not always what it was I said.
+
+After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
+candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
+struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
+I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
+this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
+loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED
+
+
+Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
+sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
+oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
+which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
+loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's
+friend.
+
+If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
+passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
+cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
+dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether
+blameless, as I was not.
+
+Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
+hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
+review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
+of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
+comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
+she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
+elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.
+
+You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
+frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
+turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
+But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
+jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.
+
+In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
+sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
+father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
+that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
+she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
+telling me naïvely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
+save only Richard Jennifer.
+
+And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though
+never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this
+point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she
+would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she
+knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it
+were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.
+
+Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of
+these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of
+friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So
+long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come
+to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I
+thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For
+love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and
+once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or
+cunningly devised.
+
+With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed
+slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world
+without--if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a
+syllable to me--and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond
+the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.
+
+Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not
+ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and
+angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride
+took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing
+me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for
+any useful thing.
+
+One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised
+me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as
+was her wont when I grew restive.
+
+"What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be
+about it, Monsieur Impetuous?" she cried. "_Fi donc!_ you'd try the
+patience of a saint!"
+
+"Which you are not," I ventured. "But truly, Margery, I am growing
+stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know.
+Besides--"
+
+"Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?"
+
+I laughed. "I'll say whatever you would have me say--so it be not the
+truth."
+
+"I'll have you say nothing until you sit down."
+
+She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the
+window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at
+my feet.
+
+"Now you may go on," she said.
+
+"You have not told me what you would have me say."
+
+"The truth," she commanded.
+
+"'"What is truth," said jesting Pilate,'" I quoted. "Why do you suppose
+my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and
+place?"
+
+"You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so
+impatient to be gone."
+
+"Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide
+inactive when duty calls?"
+
+"That is not the whole truth," she said, half absently. "You think you
+are unwelcome here."
+
+"'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be
+relieved when he is safely quit of me."
+
+"'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John," she retorted, giving me
+back my own words. "Has ever word been brought you that he would speed
+your parting?"
+
+"Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never
+seen his face, as yet."
+
+"And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and
+you are Roger Ireton's son."
+
+"I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the
+unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my
+seeking--this asylum in his house."
+
+"True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's."
+
+"What is it, then?--besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?"
+
+"I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin."
+
+"That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?"
+
+She looked away from me and said: "He is my father's factor and man of
+affairs."
+
+"Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught
+to this parchment-faced--to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your
+father, or any."
+
+"How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father
+from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among
+the rebels?"
+
+"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed--oh, pardon me again, I
+pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was
+that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was
+too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."
+
+"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"
+
+"'Twas his threat to me--to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you
+greatly blame me, Margery?"
+
+"No."
+
+Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the
+more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for
+speaking.
+
+"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length.
+"He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
+but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."
+
+Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
+smiled within.
+
+"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan
+may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."
+
+'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
+answering flash.
+
+"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have
+his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
+come and quarter on us--"
+
+I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
+in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.
+
+"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
+yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."
+
+She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of
+my treason, Monsieur John."
+
+"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.
+
+She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?"
+Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must
+not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
+saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
+have told me."
+
+"What do you know?"
+
+"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
+and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
+Ireton."
+
+"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
+I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"
+
+"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all
+mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"
+
+Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
+for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
+time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
+greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
+fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
+briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
+might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
+again.
+
+"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own
+purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de
+Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.
+I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and
+the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am
+Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my
+father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride--"
+
+"Now who is fierce?" she cried. And then, like lightning: "Will you
+raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?"
+
+"You know I will not," I protested, so gravely that she laughed again,
+though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew
+not, in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur
+John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age." Then she
+sobered quickly and added this: "And yet I fear that this is what my
+father fears."
+
+I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or
+that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine
+enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause
+to dread me.
+
+"He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough," she added.
+
+I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.
+
+"Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly
+out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my
+father's house--or rather in the house that was my father's. But that
+was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to
+think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's,
+certainly; but 'twas never mine."
+
+"And yet--and yet it should be yours, John Ireton." She said it bravely,
+with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.
+
+"'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides
+to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard
+Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery."
+
+She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay.
+After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was
+in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them
+shine like stars.
+
+"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.
+
+'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and
+I could not say it.
+
+"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend--as I am his."
+
+"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you
+would have it?"
+
+My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great
+oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding
+in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her
+unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them
+was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode
+as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of
+his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner
+born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the
+jog-trot of his beast.
+
+I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her,
+these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not
+speak until they came so near that I could make them out.
+
+"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.
+And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend
+to Dick did I not--"
+
+She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to
+me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance
+on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some
+babblement of voices, though not the words.
+
+"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."
+
+She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had
+thought her gone--gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the
+factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I
+had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.
+
+"You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other,
+Monsieur John?"
+
+"Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have
+been hoping there was no other."
+
+"But if I say there may be?"
+
+My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously
+to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another--
+
+"Margery, come hither where I may see you." And when she stood before me
+like a bidden child: "Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?"
+
+But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive
+she fell a-laughing.
+
+"What impudence!" she cried. "_Ma foi_! You should borrow Père
+Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.
+But not before."
+
+But still I pressed her.
+
+"Tell me, Margery."
+
+She tossed her head and would not look at me. "Dick Jennifer is but a
+boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And a soldier."
+
+The sickness in my heart became a fire.
+
+"O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!"
+
+All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place
+was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have
+passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.
+
+"Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or
+mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only
+knew--if I dared tell you--"
+
+But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.
+She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.
+
+"Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though
+he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to
+put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I
+shall not stay to listen, sir."
+
+With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her
+hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.
+
+"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me
+mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."
+
+I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her
+answer came. And this is what she said:
+
+"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis
+Falconnet asked me to marry him. I--I hope you do feel better, Captain
+Ireton."
+
+And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me
+to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND
+
+
+It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the
+factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and
+sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would
+curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my
+enemy.
+
+I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby
+Hundred--indeed, I saw them daily from my window--and Darius would be
+telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the
+south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have
+told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm,
+pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her
+lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how
+to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed--knew and raged afresh at my own
+impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of
+this devil.
+
+Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered
+love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call
+aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more
+downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at
+the mercy of this fiend.
+
+I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift--some
+winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well
+this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than
+handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and
+soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power
+of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will
+for that which he was not.
+
+As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart
+from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity
+or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed
+after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep
+the scale from tipping--all were as one to him, or to the Francis
+Falconnet I knew.
+
+And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love
+would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce
+desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood;
+but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to
+Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman
+volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might
+brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.
+
+It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us
+in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and
+grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless
+baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his
+fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.
+
+And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that
+her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But
+there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer
+captain with the winning way was of the _haute noblesse_, and he could
+make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you
+may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump
+cards to play against the absent lover.
+
+So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days--the first in
+many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky
+was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness
+followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was
+this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and
+lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the
+good priest known to me.
+
+Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I
+have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a
+friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of
+men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me
+at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.
+
+"A truly sweet young demoiselle," he said, by way of foreword, no sooner
+was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this
+text I grew to know and love him.
+
+He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and
+features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as
+Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not
+tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist
+with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of
+the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white
+hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely
+chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far
+older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among
+the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.
+
+I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.
+
+"But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness,"
+I ventured, when all was said. "'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of
+parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are
+but savages, as they were."
+
+At this he smiled and shook his head. _"Non, Monsieur_, not so. You are
+a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. _Mais, mon ami_,
+they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are
+far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and
+faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way."
+
+I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book
+called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
+youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
+when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
+they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."
+
+"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must
+confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
+them, too."
+
+From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
+interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
+dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
+telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
+forest.
+
+Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
+north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
+thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
+bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
+Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
+unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
+his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
+Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
+take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
+army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.
+
+On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
+of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
+and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
+naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
+might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.
+
+As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
+must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
+was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
+two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
+Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
+well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
+and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
+waiting for some messenger from the south.
+
+I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
+more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the
+news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.
+
+"I go and come through all this borderland," he said, when I had asked
+him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, "but it was mam'selle's
+message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and
+I would journey far to see her."
+
+I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely
+Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.
+
+"But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!" said I.
+
+His look forgave the protest in the words.
+
+"Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?"
+
+Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet
+I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this
+same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.
+
+"But how--I do not understand how that can be," I stammered. "Surely,
+she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that
+is--"
+
+The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.
+
+"Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain
+Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I
+think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her
+child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave
+his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he
+kept it."
+
+"Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the
+terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu.
+The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in
+Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob."
+
+His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. "The time has not yet passed,"
+he said, gently. "I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither,
+hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in
+hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found
+me."
+
+This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said
+at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how
+perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he
+rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess
+the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to
+that--her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her
+sending for the priest--the madness of my love for her was as naught
+compared to that anger which seized and racked me.
+
+I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
+grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
+keen to suffer at the end.
+
+A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
+the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
+it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
+call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
+and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
+core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
+and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
+candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
+doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier,"
+she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.
+
+From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
+So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
+before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
+to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
+to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
+side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!
+
+What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
+thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and
+later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot
+fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
+that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do
+know.
+
+The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
+nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
+and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
+the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
+myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.
+
+With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
+might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
+the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
+as with the strength of ten.
+
+Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
+day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
+candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks,
+you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains--the which I had. His
+place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew
+no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected,
+and that some air of mystery was abroad.
+
+When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a
+thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I
+drank a second cup of wine,--'twas old madeira of my father's
+laying-in,--and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not
+yield it.
+
+It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan,
+would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the
+weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone
+bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a
+candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken
+clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and
+found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.
+
+It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in
+the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done
+the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my
+knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me
+strength to break his neck across it.
+
+At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the
+window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the
+front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them,
+I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.
+
+The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the
+oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere
+of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal,
+though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for
+silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling
+mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition--old as man, for
+aught I know--of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I
+laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my
+father's roof within the compass of the night.
+
+Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin
+forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I
+heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.
+Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
+For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
+remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
+bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
+become fiercely debatable.
+
+It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
+hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
+looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
+seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
+black beneath my window.
+
+It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
+sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
+sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
+words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
+and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
+the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.
+
+"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
+a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of
+how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
+the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.
+
+At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
+broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.
+
+Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
+door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
+braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
+was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
+what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
+enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
+chance of interruption.
+
+I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
+behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
+not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
+know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
+red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
+me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
+birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
+nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
+task to do and I would do it.
+
+My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
+it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
+had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
+vigilance.
+
+I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
+in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
+been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
+solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
+whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.
+
+"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.
+
+"A friend," said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
+of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.
+
+"By God, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for
+he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to
+scant his breath for shoutings.
+
+It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too
+hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do--or seek to
+do--his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so
+it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs--and
+when I rose he rose not with me.
+
+With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to
+knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen
+at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a
+pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the
+nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from
+within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper's
+oath.
+
+I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some
+foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests,
+no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it,
+and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.
+Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I
+have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The
+other two were strangers.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART
+
+
+Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in
+upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would
+have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the
+midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay
+and listen.
+
+It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in
+years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and
+garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of
+foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.
+
+"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not
+old Roger's son?"
+
+"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glass
+again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever
+knew.
+
+"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas some
+half-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in the
+Royal Scots."
+
+Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service and
+levanted to the Continent."
+
+The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.
+
+"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about
+him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would
+stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they
+told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,
+and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him
+she shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le père aux têtes rondes, lui-même!
+Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!
+ha!"
+
+Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred
+cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than
+"roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more
+because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,
+and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be
+kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on
+and listened with the better grace.
+
+"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jester
+who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.
+
+Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned
+to Gilbert Stair.
+
+"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, passing the question on.
+
+At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,
+too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the
+reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's
+father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its
+simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray
+eyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the
+mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him
+that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew
+not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her
+paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched
+the weak chin to a hair.
+
+"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" he
+quavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His title was well
+hanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!"
+
+A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant
+outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.
+
+"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel
+Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tis
+likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come
+into his own again."
+
+"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle
+afresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he
+came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."
+
+My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie in
+words.
+
+"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached
+for special duty.'"
+
+"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"
+
+Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dear
+Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.
+Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;
+'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assure
+you!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen upon
+me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking
+he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."
+
+Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, Sir
+Francis? You've promised that, you know."
+
+I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this
+little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.
+
+"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had
+what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him
+here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.
+Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--this
+to the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your title will be well quieted,
+Mr. Stair."
+
+At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till
+the bottles reeled.
+
+"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimped
+here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
+his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
+If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
+peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."
+
+The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
+had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
+door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
+that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."
+
+Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
+business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
+Falconnet who gave the toast.
+
+"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,
+Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"
+
+"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
+better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
+this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same
+old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
+you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
+ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the
+wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
+them."
+
+By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
+I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
+Captain Damaré, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
+savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
+placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
+king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
+in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
+learn, he was a man for us to fear.
+
+"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
+And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will
+not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
+
+It was Falconnet who answered.
+
+"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
+your news, Captain."
+
+"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailing
+in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to
+dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest with
+my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border
+settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
+
+I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met
+with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known
+him. Then I heard the baronet say:
+
+"But yet the thing is done?"
+
+"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after
+which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And
+that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
+Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
+Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
+
+There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke
+in upon it shrilly.
+
+"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting from
+his chair. "'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know it
+well, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel
+militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
+
+But the captain put him down in brief.
+
+"Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tis
+hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at
+best--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest
+in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--I
+would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord's
+commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
+
+The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumbly
+like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too
+violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what
+double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely
+something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
+
+So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways
+and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular
+orders.
+
+"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota
+will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
+will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
+
+"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
+
+"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
+
+Falconnet's oath was of impatience.
+
+"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
+necks. The country is alive with rebels."
+
+Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
+route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
+partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
+horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
+under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
+prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
+
+But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
+within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
+factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
+subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
+gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
+drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
+powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
+map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
+Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
+
+At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what
+this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the
+frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us
+knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men were
+planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be
+done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led
+by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the
+over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a
+junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk
+and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
+
+It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of
+any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought
+upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay
+before me.
+
+The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
+
+But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task
+of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking
+the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was
+nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region
+at the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man for
+self-defense?
+
+At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would
+know how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'd
+find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to
+this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick before
+the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the
+half-score miles to Jennifer House.
+
+Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should
+last--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which
+again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I
+would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second
+thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge
+of the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking the
+time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set
+some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the
+convoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedient
+seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught
+and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
+
+So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and
+glare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers and
+the bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. If
+I could make a shift to rob them of this map--
+
+It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to
+take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and
+the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon
+their figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and the
+captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he
+was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw
+not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
+
+My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within
+and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I
+might snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I
+had come.
+
+So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching
+hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost
+my grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the wooden
+shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling
+the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the
+dead.
+
+As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs
+flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding
+figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I
+had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the
+night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon
+horse-holder.
+
+"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer,
+put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,
+while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious
+scrap of parchment in his hand.
+
+Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattered
+down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by
+my doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but
+tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I
+had it safe.
+
+You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what
+followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little
+stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now
+to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain
+hung in air and sought his foothold.
+
+With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
+When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it
+tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged
+upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through
+the gaping doorway.
+
+I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with the
+point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the
+oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the
+saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till
+the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently
+by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with
+the sword at the man upon his back.
+
+It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust
+he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
+Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the
+night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon
+shot to crush my skull.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY
+
+
+Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will
+tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on
+the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to
+give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my
+captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and
+feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and
+aching from their buffetings.
+
+How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this
+harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could
+not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung
+pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses
+tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.
+
+The scene within the great fore-room of the house had been shifted, too.
+A sentry was pacing back and forth before the door--a Hessian grenadier
+by the size and shako of him; and when the two trooper bailiffs thrust
+me in, and I had winked and blinked my eyes accustomed to the
+candle-light, I saw the table had been swept of its bottles and glasses,
+and around it, sitting as in council, were some half-score officers of
+the British light-horse with their colonel at the head.
+
+As it chanced, this was my first sight near at hand of that British
+commander whose name in after years the patriot mothers spoke to fright
+their children. He did not look a monster. As I recall him now, he was a
+short, square-bodied man, younger by some years than myself, and yet
+with an old campaigner's head well set upon aggressive shoulders. His
+eyes were black and ferrety; and his face, well seasoned by the Carolina
+sun, was swart as any Arab's. A man, I thought, who could be
+gentle-harsh or harsh-revengeful, as the mood should prompt; who could
+make well-turned courtier compliments to a lady and damn a trooper in
+the self-same breath.
+
+This was that Colonel Banastre Tarleton who gave no quarter to
+surrendered men; and when I looked into the sloe-black eyes I saw in
+them for me a waiting gibbet.
+
+"So!" he rapped out, when I was haled before him. "You're the spying
+rebel captain, eh? Are you alive enough to hang?"
+
+His lack of courtesy rasped so sorely that I must needs give place to
+wrath and answer sharply that there was small doubt of it, since I could
+stand and curse him.
+
+He scowled at that and cursed me back again as heartily as any
+fishwife. Then suddenly he changed his tune.
+
+"They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
+loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
+die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?"
+
+I said it would, most surely.
+
+He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
+the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
+the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
+think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
+the midst.
+
+"By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!" he swore. "You rebels are
+all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!"
+
+"Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
+Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
+the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me."
+
+"If that is your last word--But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
+over."
+
+"It needs not an hour nor a minute," I replied. "If I knew aught about
+the Continental army--which I do not--I'd see you hanged in your own
+stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
+marvel greatly--"
+
+"At what?" he cut in rudely.
+
+"At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
+straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
+'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you."
+
+He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
+sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.
+
+While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
+look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
+without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
+offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
+chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
+shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
+and then of apprehension.
+
+As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
+ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
+and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
+older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
+pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
+niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.
+
+She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
+out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure of a man behind her; a man I
+guessed in jealous wrath to be the baronet--a reasonless suspicion,
+since the volunteer captain would certainly have made his presence known
+when his colonel had called for him. But while my heart was yet afire my
+lady moved aside as if to have a better sight of us below; and then I
+saw it was the priest behind her.
+
+While I was watching her, and we were waiting yet upon the
+aide-de-camp's return, there was a stir without, and when it reached the
+door the sentry challenged. Some confab followed, and I overheard enough
+to tell me that a scouting party had come in, bringing a prisoner. The
+colonel bade me stand aside, and passed the word to fetch the prisoner
+before him. When the thing was done I set my teeth upon a groan. For it
+was Richard Jennifer.
+
+Luckily, he did not single me out among the bystanders, being fresh come
+from the night without to the glare of candle-light within; and while
+the swart-faced colonel plied him with questions I had a chance to look
+him up and down. Though his arm was still in its sling, he was seemingly
+the better of his wound. There was a glow of health and strength
+returning in cheek and eye, and I thought him handsomer than ever what
+time he stood forth boldly and fronted down the bullying colonel.
+
+Knowing the Jennifer stock and its fine scorn of subterfuge, I feared it
+would go hard with Richard; and so, indeed, it had gone, lacking a word
+in season from an enemy. When Tarleton would have made him choose
+between the taking of the king's oath and captivity in the hulks at
+Charleston, a burly Hessian captain at the table spoke the word in
+season.
+
+"_Verdammt!_ mine Colonel; I vill know dis Mr. Yennifer. He is a prave
+yoong schalavags, and he is not gone out mit der rebels. Give him to me
+for mine plunders."
+
+The colonel laughed and showed his teeth. Having one man to hang he
+could afford to be lenient with another.
+
+"What will you do with him, Captain Lauswoulter? By the look of him he'd
+make but indifferent sausage-meat."
+
+"Vat shall I do mit him? I shall make him mine best bows and send him
+home, py Gott! Ve did had some liddle troubles mit der cards, and ven
+mine foot was slipped on dis _verdammt_ grease-grass, he did not run me
+t'rough so like he might."
+
+"Oh; an affair of honor? Well, we'll count that in his favor. Take him
+away, Trelawny, and quarter yourself and twenty men upon him at Jennifer
+House. You have your parole, Mr. Jennifer; but by the Lord, if you break
+it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
+ridge-pole."
+
+Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
+had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
+bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.
+
+Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
+and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
+seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
+in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
+and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
+as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.
+
+While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
+aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
+and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
+was not yet in from posting out the sentries.
+
+I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
+that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
+to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
+not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
+hear in brief.
+
+"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
+time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
+baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
+within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
+know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."
+
+I made so sure that I should hang in any case that it seemed foolish to
+answer, and so I saved my breath. Withal he was the terror of our
+Southland, this tyrant colonel gave me time to consider; and while he
+waited, grim and silent, the candles on the table guttered and ran down,
+and the dim light failed till I could no longer see the face of her I
+loved framed in the archway of the stair.
+
+I thought it hard that I had seen my last of her sweet face thus through
+thickening shadows, as a dream might fade. Nevertheless, I would be glad
+that I had seen her thus, since otherwise, I thought, I must have gone
+without this last or any other sight of her.
+
+It was while I was still straining my eyes for one more glimpse of her,
+and while the court room silence deepened dense upon us like the
+shadows, that Colonel Tarleton signed to those who guarded me. A hand
+was laid upon my shoulder, but when I would have turned to go with them
+a woman's cry cut sharp into the stillness. Then, before any one could
+say a word or think a thought, my dauntless little lady stood beside me,
+her eyes alight and all her glorious beauty heightened in a blaze of
+generous emotion.
+
+"For shame! Colonel Tarleton," she cried. "Do you come thus into my
+father's house and take a wounded guest and hang him? You say he is a
+spy, but that he can not be, for he has lain abed in this same house a
+month or more. You shall not hang him!"
+
+At this there was a mighty stir about the table, as you may guess; and
+some would smile, and some would snuff the candles for a better sight of
+her sweet face. And through it all, the while my heart went near to
+bursting at this fresh proof of her most fearless loyalty, I ground my
+teeth in wrath that all those men should look their fill and say by wink
+and nod and covert smile that this were somewhat more than hostess
+loyalty.
+
+But it was the colonel's mocking smile that lashed me sharpest; his
+smile and what he said; and yet not that so much as what he left to be
+inferred.
+
+"Ha! How is this, Mistress Margery? Do you keep open house for the
+king's enemies? That spells treason, my dear young lady, and hath an
+ugly look for you, besides."
+
+"It should have no look at all, save that of hospitality, sir," she
+countered, bravely. "Surely I may plead for justice to a wounded man who
+was, and is, my father's guest?"
+
+"And yet he is a spy, and spies must hang."
+
+"He is no spy."
+
+The colonel's bow made but a mock of true politeness.
+
+"You should not make me contradict a lady, Mistress Margery. 'Tis
+evident you have not all his confidence. He was captured red-handed in
+the act at yonder window, listening to that which he may never know and
+live to prate about. Besides, he killed a sentry for his chance to
+listen, and for that I'd hang him if he were my own father's guest."
+
+So much he said as mild as if he had not left his reading of the law to
+figure in our annals as King George's butcher. Then in a sudden gust of
+rage he turned upon the priest, cursing him brutally and threatening
+vengeance for his bringing of the lady to the court room.
+
+My brave one stood a moment, shocked as she had warrant for. Then,
+before the priest or I or any one could stop her, she ran to throw
+herself upon her knees at Colonel Tarleton's feet--to kneel and plead
+for me as I would gladly have died a thousand deaths rather than have
+her plead; for life for me, or if not that, at least for some brief
+respite that the priest might shrive me.
+
+And in the end she won the respite, though I did think it far too dearly
+bought. When he granted it the colonel lifted her and took her hand,
+bowing low over it with courtly deference. "For your sake, Mistress
+Margery, it shall be put off till morning," he said; then gave the
+order: At dawn they would march me out and hang me, and I would best be
+ready. For later than the sunrise of a new day the king himself might
+not delay my taking off.
+
+"You know too much, my cursing Captain," was his parting word. "Were it
+not for Mistress Margery and my promise, you should not keep the breath
+to tell it over night."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HOW A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR
+
+
+Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that
+young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet's second
+in the duel. Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep
+my own room for the night. I had expected manacles and a roommate guard
+at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both. When he had me
+safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back
+and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the
+window from below, and so left me.
+
+There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars. What
+with the night's adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped
+on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may
+well suppose. For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or
+passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their
+pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.
+
+So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my
+lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking
+that the respite bought by my sweet lady's humbling was more dearly
+bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and
+tree without this interval of waiting.
+
+To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came. He was a
+good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he
+would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of
+praise and love. For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so
+sure and near that all the air was growing chill and lifeless at its
+presence, he was a ready help in time of need. If I were "heretic" to
+him, I swear I knew it not for aught he said or did; and though I
+trusted that when my time was come I should stand forth with some small
+simple-hearted show of courage, yet when he went away I felt I was the
+stronger for his coming. And this, mark you, though I was still
+unshriven, and he had never named the churchly rite to me.
+
+When he was gone I fell to wearing out the time afoot; and, lest you
+think me harder than I was, it may be said that while I did not make
+confession to the kindly priest, I hope I tried to make my peace with
+God in some such simpler fashion as our forebears did. 'Twas none so
+great a matter, for one who lives a soldier's life must needs be ripe
+for plucking hastily.
+
+But in the final casting of accounts there was an item written down in
+red, and one in black, and these would not be scored across for all the
+travail of a soul departing. The one in black was bitter sorrow for the
+fate from which I might not live to save my loved one; the one in red
+was this; that I should die and carry hence the knowledge that might
+else nip the Indian onfall in the bud.
+
+No sooner was the priest away than I began to upbraid myself because I
+had not told him of this British-Indian murder plan. And yet on second
+thought 'twas clear that it had been but a poor shifting of the burden
+to weaker shoulders; and thankless, too, for Tarleton would be sure to
+put him on the question-rack to make him tell of all that passed between
+us.
+
+As I had let him go, he would have naught to tell, and so was safe,
+where otherwise he might be hanged or buried in the hulks for knowing
+what I knew. No, it were best he knew it not; but how was I to rid me of
+this burden?--of this and of that other laid upon me for my love?
+
+The question asked itself a many a time, and was as often answerless,
+before there came a stir without and voices in the corridor. It was the
+changing of the guard, I guessed, and so it proved, since presently I
+heard the clanking of the officer's sword, and double footfalls
+minishing into silence.
+
+The sentry newly come paced back and forth to a low-hummed quick-step of
+his own, bestirring himself as one who, roused but now from sleep,
+would wake himself and be alert. He made more noise than did the other,
+and that is why I marked it when the footfalls ceased abruptly. A moment
+afterward the bar was lifted cautiously from its socket, the latch
+clicked gently, and the door swung open. I looked, and must needs look
+again to make assurance sure. For on the threshold stood my lady
+Margery, and just behind her some broad figure of a woman whom I knew
+for her stout Norman tiring-maid.
+
+She gave me little time for any word of welcome or of deprecation. While
+still I stood amazed she dragged the woman in with her and closed the
+door. At that I found my tongue.
+
+"Margery! Why have you come?" I spoke in French, and she was quick to
+lay a finger on her lip.
+
+"Speak to me in English, if you please," she whispered. "Jeanne knows
+nothing, and she need not know. But you ask why I come: could I do less
+than come, dear friend?"
+
+I had always marveled that she could be so mocking hard at times, and at
+other times--as now--so soft and gentle. And though I thought it cruel
+that I should have to fight my battle for the losing of her over again,
+I had not the heart to chide her.
+
+"You could have done much less, dear lady," I said, taking her hands in
+mine; "much less, and still be blameless. You have done too much for me
+already. I would you had not done so much, I would to God I had been
+hanged before you went upon your knees to that--"
+
+She freed one hand and laid a finger on my lip--nay, it was her palm,
+and if I took a dying man's fair leave and kissed it softly, I think she
+knew it not.
+
+"Hush!" she commanded. "Is this a time to harbor bitter thoughts? I
+thought you might have other things to say to me, Monsieur John."
+
+"There is no other thing that I may say."
+
+"Not anything at all?"
+
+"Naught but a parting hope for you. I hope you will be true and loyal to
+yourself, Margery _mia_."
+
+"To myself? I do not understand."
+
+"I think you do--I think you must."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+I turned it over more than once in my mind if I should tell her all I
+had feared; should tell her how I came to kill a man and was fair set to
+kill another had I found a wedding afoot in the great fore-room. I could
+not bring myself to do it, and yet I thought it would go hard with me if
+I should leave her still unwarned.
+
+"If I should try to make you understand, you will be angry, as you were
+before."
+
+The wicker chair was close beside the table and she sat down. And when
+she spoke she had her hands tight-clasped across her knee and would not
+look at me.
+
+"Is it--about--Sir Francis?"
+
+"It is," said I, pausing once more upon the brink of full confession.
+
+She waited patiently for me to speak further; waited and let me fight it
+out in slow pacings up and down before her chair. Without, the night was
+calm and still, and through the opened casement came the measured beat
+of footfalls on the gravel where the outer sentry kept his watch beneath
+the window. Within, the single candle battled feebly with the gloom and
+lighted naught for me save my dear lady's face, pensive now and saintly
+sweet as it had been that morning when I had dwelt upon it the while she
+knew it not. And in the background stood the sleepy tire-woman, giving
+no sign of life save now and then a tortured yawn behind her hand.
+
+I think my lady must have known how hard it was for me to speak, for,
+when the silence had grown overlong, she said, gently: "I bought these
+flying minutes of the sentry, Monsieur John. Will you not use them?"
+
+"If I should say the thing I ought to say, you'll think the minutes
+dearly bought, I fear."
+
+"No, that I shall not, if it will ease your mind."
+
+"Then tell me why you sent for Father Matthieu."
+
+The light was dim, as I have said, yet I could see the faint flush
+spread from neck to cheek.
+
+"You are not of the Church, Monsieur John. You would not understand if I
+should tell you."
+
+"I think I understand without your telling. You said Sir Francis
+Falconnet had asked for you."
+
+"'Twas you who drove me to say it."
+
+"Because I tried to warn you?"
+
+"Because you would be vengeful when you should have been forgiving."
+
+"'Twas not revenge, just then, though while I live I shall have ample
+cause to hate this man."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"It was love; love for you, and--and Richard Jennifer."
+
+She rose, and I could see her eyes ashine for all the half-gloom of the
+candle-light.
+
+"You are a loyal friend!" she said, and there was that within the words
+to make me glad, whatever fate the dawn should have in store for me.
+"You always think of others first; you think of others now, when--when
+death--Oh, Monsieur John! what can I do for you? Say quick! The man is
+coming to the door!"
+
+"Now I have told you this, there is but one other thing, Margery dear;
+one little thing that will not let me die in peace. If I might have ten
+words with Richard Jennifer--"
+
+She left me in a fever-flutter of excitement, whipped to the door, and
+had a word with him who stood without. I heard the chink of coin, and
+then she hastened back to me, all eagerness and tremulous impatience.
+
+"Tell me--tell me instantly what I must do. I am not afraid. Shall I
+ride down to Jennifer House and fetch Dick here?"
+
+"He is a prisoner, and if he were not, they would not let him see me.
+Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet--God help me,
+Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of
+helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a
+man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Write it down for me and Dick shall have it.
+Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! _O Sancta Maria, mater.
+Dei_--"
+
+The low impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as
+I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There
+were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in
+my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled
+parchment map snatched and hidden when Captain Stuart had winced and
+dropped it at the bidding of the whistling sword about his ears.
+
+How it was they had not searched me for it, I know not; though haply the
+captain did not guess how he had lost it. Be that as it might, I had it
+safe, and Dick should have it safe, and use it, too, to some good
+purpose, as I fondly hoped.
+
+You'd hardly think from the slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I
+could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a
+niggard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the
+margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the pricking
+out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the
+flourish to my name, my eager little lady seized the pounce-box, sanded
+me the heavy trailings of the quill, snatched and hid the parchment in
+her bosom, and was gone.
+
+And but for this; that I heard the door-latch click behind her, and then
+the heavy wooden bar fall into place, I might have thought the
+happenings of the hour the unsubstantial fancies of a dream.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+HOW A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF
+
+
+Although I could not hope to know the outcome of this desperate cast to
+speed the warning to the over-mountain settlements--could never live to
+know it, as I thought--I screened the candle and stood beside the open
+window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound
+to gather some encouragement. For sure, I reasoned, if Margery's
+messenger should fail to pass the sentries there would be clamor enough
+to tell me of it.
+
+So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was
+space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of
+success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm
+that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough
+that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion
+was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the
+bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in
+sleep--I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering
+fires--I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then
+was any messenger of Margery's to pass the lines, or, passing them, to
+come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a
+prisoner in all but name?
+
+Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while
+the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart
+in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the
+bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I
+had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger
+were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the
+fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was
+sent,--I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my
+correspondent,--both Margery and Dick would be involved.
+
+'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we
+seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the
+thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in
+silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan
+moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor
+crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding
+abreast--a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse
+sandwiched in between, a woman.
+
+You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she
+had done--this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any
+cost. Having no messenger she could trust--she knew it well when she had
+promised me--she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard
+that would have daunted many a man.
+
+I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times
+that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.
+Her captors passed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and
+grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some
+with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her
+and to jeer and laugh. At length--it seemed an age to me--an officer
+appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her
+horse and led into the house.
+
+Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight
+out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At
+that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never
+prayed before that God would grant me this one boon--to stand beside her
+in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all
+that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she
+went, or what the message was she carried.
+
+Yours is a skeptic age, my dears, and you have learned to scoff at
+things you do not understand. But, so long as I shall live, I must
+believe that agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it
+wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the
+sentry's challenge, and then a quick unbarring of the door. I turned
+upon my heel to face a young ensign come with two men at his back to
+take me to the colonel.
+
+They bound me well and strongly with many wrappings of stout cord before
+they led me down. Nor must you think me broken-spirited because I let
+them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to die
+unmanacled; but now I suffered gladly this little, seeing I had made my
+dear lady suffer so greatly.
+
+When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I
+had prayed God they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain
+to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the
+place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they
+had never offered her a chair.
+
+The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and
+Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid
+to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and
+that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust
+me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came
+and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's
+eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more
+beautiful than I had ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear
+the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be
+expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame
+and agony.
+
+When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our
+fresh offense.
+
+"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your
+treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"
+
+"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly,
+thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet
+I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my
+getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with
+your sentry."
+
+"By God, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered
+with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but
+not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame,
+Mistress Margery Stair?"
+
+Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but
+never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment
+she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate
+deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a
+dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.
+
+"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.
+'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."
+
+The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.
+
+"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or
+so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you
+do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."
+
+As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming
+red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to
+clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still
+have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and,
+when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an
+accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and
+at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his
+friend.
+
+For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting
+with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And
+on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy
+liar.
+
+"A likely story, that!" he scoffed. "Next you will say she knew not what
+this message was."
+
+"I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it."
+
+I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of
+tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see?
+He has the letter!"
+
+I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood
+the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.
+
+"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and
+does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make
+a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have
+her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."
+
+While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of
+inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it
+quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at
+her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow
+wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and
+drew the bow and sped the shaft.
+
+"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel
+Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love
+there went a duty."
+
+"A duty, say you? How is that?"
+
+I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye
+again.
+
+"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my
+wife."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH
+
+
+For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to
+glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close
+beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by
+the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me
+to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by the lie.
+
+But as it was, I faced him down; and winning him, won all. There was a
+muttered oath from Falconnet, a tremulous cry of rage from where her
+father stood; and then I sought my lady's eyes to read my sentence in
+them.
+
+She gave me but a glance, and though I tried as I had never tried before
+to read her meaning it was hid from me. But this I marked; that she did
+draw aside from me, and that her face was cold and still, and that her
+lips were pressed together as if not all nor any should ever make her
+speak again.
+
+At this sharp crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death
+and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly,
+stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and
+once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he
+broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert Stair and then
+at Falconnet.
+
+"God save us! I give you joy, Mr. Stair, and you, Sir Francis. These two
+have duped you bravely. By heavens! Sir Frank; 'twas you who should have
+had the sword thrust in the duel. In that event you might have stood in
+Captain Ireton's shoes, and so had the priest fetched for your benefit."
+Then he turned to Margery with a bow that had no touch of mockery in it.
+"I crave your pardon, Madam; I knew not you were pleading for your
+husband's life an hour ago. It grieves me that I may not spare him to
+you longer than the night, but war is cruel at its best."
+
+She stood like any statue done in cold Carrara while he spoke; and when
+she made no sign he gave the word to recommit me.
+
+"Take him away, Lieutenant Tybee, and see he has a bribe-proof man this
+time to keep him company. Madam Ireton, I'll put you on your honor: you
+may have access to him, but there must be no messages carried in or out.
+To your quarters, gentlemen. We must ride far and hard to-morrow."
+
+When his final word had set her free, my frozen maiden came to life and
+ran to throw herself in helpless sobbings, not upon her father, as you
+would think, but upon the good priest. And it was Father Matthieu who
+led her, still crying softly, out of the throng and up the low stair;
+and now I marked that all the rough soldiery stood aside and made way
+for her with never a man among them to scoff or sneer or point a gibe.
+
+At her going, Tybee drew his sword and cut the cord that bound me.
+
+"These youngling cubs are over-cautious, Captain Ireton. We shall not
+make it harder for each other than we must," he said, with bluff good
+nature. And then: "Will you lead the way to your room, sir?"--this to
+give the youngling cub another lesson, I suppose.
+
+I walked beside him to the stair, and when I stumbled, being weak and
+spent, he took my arm and steadied me, and I did think it kindly done.
+At my own door he gave me precedence again, saying, with a touch of the
+grateful Old World courtesy, "After you, sir," and standing aside to let
+me enter first. When we were both within he touched upon the colonel's
+mandate.
+
+"I must obey my orders, Captain Ireton, but by your good leave I shall
+not lock you up with any trooper; I'll stay with you myself."
+
+I thought this still more kindly than aught he had done before, and so I
+told him. But he put it off lightly.
+
+"'Tis little enough any one can do for you, my friend, but I will do
+that little as I can. You are like to have a visitor, I take it; if you
+have, I'm sure 'twill be a comfort if your body-guard can be stone
+blind and deaf."
+
+So saying, he dragged the big wicker chair into the window-bay, planted
+himself deep within it with his back to all the room, and so left me to
+my own devices.
+
+Being spent enough to sleep beneath the shadow of a gibbet, I threw
+myself full-length upon the bed and was, I think, adrift upon the ebb
+tide of exhaustion and forgetfulness when once again the shifting of the
+wooden door-bar roused me. I rose up quickly, but Tybee was before me.
+There was some low-voiced conference at the door; then Tybee came to me.
+
+"'Tis Mr. Gilbert Stair," he said. "He has permission from the colonel
+and insists that he must see you _solus_. I'll take your word and leave
+you, if you like."
+
+At first I hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late
+to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed
+it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear
+lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had
+told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow in
+the morning.
+
+"Yes, yes; for God's sake let him in, Mr. Tybee!" I burst out. "I am
+fair crazed with weariness, and had forgot. 'Tis most important, I do
+assure you."
+
+The thing was done at once, and before I knew it I was alone with the
+old man who, though he was my supplanter, was also Margery's father. He
+entered cautiously, shielding his bedroom candle with his hand and
+peering over it to make me out, as if his venturing in were not
+unperilous. And I marked that when he put the candle down upon the
+table, he edged away and felt behind him for the door as if to make sure
+of his retreat in case of need.
+
+"Sit down, Captain Ireton; sit down, I beg of you," he said, in his
+thin, rasping treble. And when I had obeyed: "I think you must know what
+I've come for, Captain Ireton?"
+
+I said I could guess; and he began again, volubly now, as if to have it
+over in the shortest space.
+
+"'Twas not a gentlemanly thing for you to do, Captain Ireton--this
+marrying of a foolish girl out of hand while you were here a guest; and
+as for the priest that did it, I--I'll have him hanged before the army
+leaves, I promise you. But now 'tis done, I hope ye're prepared to make
+the best of it?"
+
+I saw at once that his daughter had not yet confided in him; that he was
+still entangled in my lie. So I thought it well to probe him deeper
+while I might.
+
+"What would you call 'the best' if I may ask?" said I, growing the
+cooler with some better seeing of the way ahead.
+
+"The marriage settlements!" he cried shrilly, coming to the point at
+once, as any miser would. "'Tis the merest matter of form, as ye may
+say, for your title to Appleby Hundred is well burnt out, I promise you.
+But for the decent look of it you might make over your quitclaim to your
+wife."
+
+"Aye, truly; so I might."
+
+"And so you should, sir; that you should, ye miserable, spying
+runag"--he choked and coughed behind his hand and then began again
+without the epithets. "'Tis the very least ye can do for her now, when
+you have the rope fair around your curs--ahem--your--your rebel neck.
+Only for the form's sake, to be sure, ye understand, for she'd inherit
+after you in any case."
+
+I saw his drift at last, and, not caring to spare him, sped the shaft of
+truth and let it find the joint in his harness.
+
+"'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not
+my wife."
+
+If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for
+the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.
+
+"Wha--what's that ye say?" he piped in shrillest cadence. "Not married?
+Then you--you--"
+
+"I lied to save her honor--that was all. A wife might do the thing she
+did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see
+and hear."
+
+For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his
+astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and
+down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he
+shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with
+here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a
+chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the
+look of one struck with a mortal sickness.
+
+"I think--I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain
+Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.
+
+"Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can
+pay," said I.
+
+"Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now--"
+
+"You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly."
+
+Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with
+certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.
+
+"Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River,
+and a major in the Virginia line," I answered, wondering how my cousin
+once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next
+question dispelled the mystery.
+
+"If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?"
+
+"As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to
+devise."
+
+"True; and yet"--he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy.
+
+"Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair," said I.
+
+"'Tis this," he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. "You've
+claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die
+to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think--I
+think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth."
+
+If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a
+secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I
+should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I
+thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his
+madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to
+cut the knot of all entanglements.
+
+As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since
+a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never
+dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the
+world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of
+it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. Dick would love her none the
+less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And
+if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor
+double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby
+Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in
+all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the
+Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with
+greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could
+help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a
+while.
+
+So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you,
+I gave my host his answer.
+
+"I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If
+you can make your daughter understand--"
+
+"The jade will do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will
+drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot.
+And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her
+legatee residuary?"
+
+At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle
+for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his title to my
+father's lands--a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was
+enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to
+think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty
+miser.
+
+"I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean," I said.
+"But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said
+a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event."
+
+"True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form." He rose and
+hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand
+played a rattling tattoo on the latch. "I--I'll go and have the papers
+drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word
+that you will sign them?"
+
+"Aye; they shall be signed."
+
+He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the
+lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room
+without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own
+communings.
+
+These were not altogether of assurance. Though I had promised readily
+enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my
+lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some
+hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to
+fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property
+and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he
+said--that she would do as she was bid--I thought I knew her temper well
+enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she
+put her will against the world, the world would never move her.
+
+'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard
+some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the
+wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at
+the door I stood apart and turned my back.
+
+When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a
+parchment that might have been a ducal title deed for size, stood
+Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of
+them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the
+corner Tybee stood to keep the door.
+
+I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them,
+strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She
+gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to
+what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last,
+under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was
+cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest,
+looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.
+
+It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his
+predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature.
+Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish
+pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.
+
+"I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this
+matter ripens further, Mr. Stair," I said.
+
+My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the
+window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so
+little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.
+
+"What has your father told you, Margery?" I asked.
+
+"He tells me nothing that I care to know."
+
+"But he has told you what you must do?"
+
+"Yes." She looked with eyes that saw me not.
+
+"And you are here to do it of your own free will?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Yet it must be done."
+
+"So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die."
+
+"'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of
+our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the
+saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some
+short while till you can change it for a better."
+
+Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.
+
+"Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the
+morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not
+thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way."
+
+"See what comes of tampering with the truth," she said, and I could see
+her short lip curl with scorn. "Why should you lie and lie again, when
+any one could see that it must come to this--or worse?"
+
+"I saw it not," I said. "But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's
+need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet
+other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."
+
+"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir,
+when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole
+again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"
+
+"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that
+you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."
+
+"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing,
+to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?
+You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"
+
+"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in
+this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that
+if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."
+
+She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion
+shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it
+cut me like a knife.
+
+"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said
+that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and
+they are waiting."
+
+I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not
+suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside
+me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage
+settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I
+bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of
+mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.
+
+I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two
+plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never
+thought to smile again.
+
+"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation
+act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I
+shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own
+house. Give me the pen."
+
+'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer
+for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though
+not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.
+
+When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him;
+the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full
+forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his
+love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And
+here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one
+well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came
+for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger
+and made me take and use it.
+
+And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and
+place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper
+room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that
+the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his
+benediction. All through this farce--which was in truth the grimmest of
+all tragedies--my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at
+the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign
+to me.
+
+You'd guess that I would take it hard--her leaving of me thus, as I made
+sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was
+off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted
+death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in
+childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had
+not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my
+mother's dying love.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS
+
+
+Though all the western quarter of the sky was night-black and spangled
+yet with stars, the dawn was graying slowly in the east when Tybee
+roused me.
+
+"They have not come for you as yet," he said; "so I took time by the
+forelock and passed the word for breakfast. It heartens a man to eat a
+bite and drink a cup of wine just on the battle's edge. Will you sit and
+let me serve you, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"That I will not," said I; adding that I would blithely share the
+breakfast with him. Whereat he laughed and clipt my hand, and swore I
+was a true soldier and a brave gentleman to boot.
+
+So we sat and hobnobbed at the table; and Tybee lighted all the remnant
+candle-ends, and broached the wine and pledged me in a bumper before we
+fell to upon the cold haunch of venison.
+
+My summons came when we had shared the heel-tap of the bottle. It was my
+toast to this kind-hearted youngster, and we drained it standing what
+time the stair gave back the tread of marching men. Tybee crashed his
+glass upon the floor and wrung my hand across the table.
+
+"Good by, my Captain; they have come. God damn me, sir, I'll swear they
+might do worse than let you go, for all your spying. You've carried off
+this matter with the lady as a gentleman should, and whilst I live, she
+shall not lack a friend. If you have any word to leave for her--"
+
+I shook my head. "No," said I; then, on second thought: "And yet there
+is a word. You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the
+lady?"
+
+"Surely; 'twas plain enough for any one to see."
+
+"Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to
+Richard Jennifer. He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in
+a formal way, and that to save the lady's honor."
+
+The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was
+lifted and my reprieve was at an end.
+
+Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier
+hangmen marched me off without ado. The house and all within it seemed
+yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly
+kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees. In shortest space
+we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.
+
+'Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day
+wakes wherein it must be shuffled off! As a soldier must, I thought I
+had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it
+upon my sleeve in battle. But now, when I was marching forth to this
+cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all
+nature cried aloud to me.
+
+The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden
+down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup
+abrim and running over with the wine of life. I thought the cool, moist
+air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature's garb had never
+seemed so blithe. There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded
+prospect. The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed
+enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us
+as we passed. And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with
+softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with
+one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had
+the scent of us.
+
+A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion
+picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made
+bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and
+saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.
+
+The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to
+be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that
+I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the
+volleying would not wake the house.
+
+So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and
+reply came out into an open grove of oaks: then I knew where they had
+brought me--and why. 'Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle
+with the baronet. On its farther confines two horses nibbled
+rein's-length at the grass, with Falconnet's trooper serving-man to hold
+them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my
+enemy was waiting.
+
+'Twas all prearranged; for when the ensign had saluted he marched his
+men a little way apart and drew them up in line with muskets ported. But
+at a sign from Falconnet, two of the men broke ranks and came to strap
+me helpless with their belts. I smiled at that, and would not miss the
+chance to jeer.
+
+"You are a sorry coward, Captain Falconnet, as bullies ever are," I
+said. "Would not your sword suffice against a man with empty hands?"
+
+He passed the taunt in silence, and when the men had left me, said: "I
+have come to speed your parting, Captain Ireton. You are a thick-headed,
+witless fool, as you have always been; yet since you've blundered into
+serving me, I would not grudge the time to come and thank you."
+
+"I serve you?" I cried. "God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the
+table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a
+carving tool!"
+
+He laughed softly. "Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because
+you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns," he retorted.
+"And yet I say you've served me."
+
+"Tell me how, in God's name, that I may not die with that sin unrepented
+of."
+
+"Oh, in many small ways, but chiefly in this affair with the little lady
+of Appleby."
+
+"Never!" I denied. "So far as decent speech could compass it, I have
+ever sought to tell her what a conscienceless villain you are."
+
+He laughed again at that.
+
+"You know women but indifferently, my Captain, if you think to breach a
+love affair by a cannonade of hard words. But I am in no humor to
+dispute with you. You have lost, and I have won; and, were I not here to
+come between, you'd look your last upon the things of earth in shortest
+order, I do assure you."
+
+"You?--you come between?" I scoffed. "You are all kinds of a knave, Sir
+Francis, but your worst enemy never accused you of being a fool!"
+
+There was a look in his eyes that I could never fathom.
+
+"You are bitter hard, John Ireton--bitter and savage and unforgiving.
+You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make
+the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have
+you never a touch of human kindliness in you?"
+
+To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I
+have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn
+a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use
+this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal
+of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me
+out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.
+
+So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and--"
+
+"Tush!" said he. "That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it
+now is but a mask."
+
+"For what?" I asked.
+
+"For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not,
+as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John
+Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's
+wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew
+not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me."
+
+"But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot
+and ran me through," I countered.
+
+"Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your
+eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life,
+and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might."
+
+"No; you reserved me for this."
+
+He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.
+
+"You forced my hand, John Ireton," he said, speaking low that the others
+might not hear. "You had her ear from day to day and used your
+privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for
+vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival--"
+
+I laughed, and sanity began to come again. "Make an end of it," I said.
+"I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you."
+
+For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it
+so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing
+Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime
+lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's
+headquarters in South Carolina.
+
+"Can you read it?" he asked.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to
+Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded."
+
+"To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?"
+
+"No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?"
+
+"No," said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.
+
+"He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to
+'list in your old service."
+
+"I would not take it--at your hands or his."
+
+"You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and
+honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines."
+
+"Make an end," I said again. "I understand you will obey his Lordship's
+order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you
+have me do?"
+
+"A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my
+very good friend."
+
+I let that go uncontradicted.
+
+"His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make
+it better," he went on.
+
+This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had
+not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he
+had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past
+midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.
+
+"Go on," said I.
+
+"Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you
+time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor."
+
+"Is that all?" I asked.
+
+"No; after that our ways must lie apart--or yours and Margery's, at all
+events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you
+have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the
+ensign."
+
+"And if I refuse?"
+
+He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.
+
+"If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to
+thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all." So much he
+said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I
+think, he spoke the simple truth. "God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's
+hell to have her!"
+
+I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This
+fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a
+passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why
+he was come upon this errand.
+
+"So?" said I. "Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?" 'Twas
+but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.
+
+He swore a sneering oath. "So the priest carried tales, did he? Well,
+make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from
+his bed and hanged like a dog."
+
+I smiled again. "'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to
+beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy."
+
+"Bah!" he scoffed. "That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I
+had better information."
+
+"A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward,
+some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and
+with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another,
+we made a sober truth of it."
+
+I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a
+fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell
+away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous
+demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought
+the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust
+his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake
+it made me shudder with abhorrence.
+
+"You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the
+spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish
+you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!" Then he
+wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. "Belt him
+to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting
+over-long."
+
+They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the
+ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little
+pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not
+why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line
+drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces
+pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I
+remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which
+would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range,
+a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets
+killed the senses.
+
+But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold
+it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside--a glance
+that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare--showed
+me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.
+
+What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
+waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
+the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
+the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
+left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had
+stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen--all this befell in
+less than any time the written words can measure.
+
+I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman
+slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
+centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
+was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
+steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
+followed after.
+
+It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
+the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
+Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
+live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
+his great hands clutching at the empty air.
+
+I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
+and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
+could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.
+
+I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the
+skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
+him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
+horse-holding trooper at his heels.
+
+And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
+and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
+away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS
+
+
+As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
+opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
+sense.
+
+Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
+ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
+the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
+agreed-on rallying point.
+
+Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
+any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
+patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
+British jaws to masticate.
+
+They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
+levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of
+all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
+contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward
+show among them of the sterling metal underneath.
+
+They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
+brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
+soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
+of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
+captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
+well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
+raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.
+
+Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against
+the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney
+of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military
+show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain
+persevering sort.
+
+"Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?" drawled one of
+them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face
+that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went
+on behind it. "I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the
+word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful
+o' lead to chaw on."
+
+I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in
+fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such
+as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.
+
+When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney--he was the
+limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind--gripped my hand and
+gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.
+
+"My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than
+that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of
+good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little;
+though as for that, we should both thank the Indian." At which he looked
+around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. "Where is
+the chief, Ephraim?"--this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically
+reloading his long rifle.
+
+"He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind
+about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking,
+immejitly, _if_ not sooner."
+
+Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for
+Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.
+
+"'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba," he said; "one of the friendlies. He was
+out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the
+news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
+to our little ambushment--"
+
+"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba:
+is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an
+Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
+more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
+little cadger."
+
+At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
+as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
+the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
+first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
+boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
+firelock and stood before me defenseless.
+
+Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
+the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
+my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
+plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
+and earned an Indian friendship.
+
+"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague
+of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if
+these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
+which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
+his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
+the day's march.
+
+"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,"
+he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
+Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
+against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
+the North."
+
+"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
+yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.
+
+He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
+shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
+frontier, had matriculated early.
+
+"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the
+Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."
+
+"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished
+reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
+the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.
+
+"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.
+
+The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a
+clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been
+heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.
+
+"By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says
+Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in
+wildcats; and I can do it now, _if_ not sooner!" he shrilled. "Come on,
+you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied--"
+
+Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in
+natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the
+borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the
+capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two
+went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a
+pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.
+
+For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the
+finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain
+apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man
+caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look
+behind him.
+
+Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might
+have done.
+
+"Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said.
+"There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let
+him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for
+every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or
+standing against trained troops in open field--" He shrugged again and
+turned to tighten his saddle-girth.
+
+"I see," said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was
+told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford,
+who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment
+thereabouts.
+
+"You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain
+Forney," said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew
+of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had
+overheard.
+
+"We'll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we're at our best in that,"
+he rejoined, carelessly. "And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that's an
+old story. The king's men have tried it twice and they have not yet
+caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping. Ease your mind on that
+score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing
+better to do. I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to
+keep it in countenance."
+
+At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its
+demands. As fortune's wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but
+by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend--to
+Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.
+
+'Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common
+enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind. In
+sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank
+confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings. That done, I owed it
+equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight
+marriage.
+
+So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I
+was not yet fit to take the field--which was true enough. Whereupon he
+and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we
+parted company.
+
+When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day's end.
+Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh
+into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till
+nightfall. The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge
+in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.
+
+It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags
+heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying
+clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air
+grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along. For sober second thought, and
+the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril
+overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had
+entangled me.
+
+The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing
+me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval. Would
+Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on
+the Holy Evangelists? I doubted it; and striving to see it through his
+eyes, was made to doubt it more. For death should have been my
+justifier, and death had played me false.
+
+As for setting the midnight marriage aside, I made sure the lawyer tribe
+could find a way, if that were all. But here there was a loyal daughter
+of the Church to reckon with. Loathing her bonds, as any true-hearted
+maiden must, would Margery consent to have them broken by the law? I
+knew well she would not. Though our poor knotting of the tie had been
+little better than a tragic farce, it lacked nothing of force to bind
+the tender conscience of a woman bred to look upon the churchly rite as
+final.
+
+So, twist and turn it as I might, the coil was desperate; and as I
+strode on gloomily, measuring this the first stage in a pilgrimage I had
+never thought to make, a fire of sullen anger began to smoke and
+smolder within me, and I could find it in my heart to curse the cruel
+kindness of my rescuers; to sorrow in my inmost soul that they had come
+between to make a living recreant of one who would fain have died an
+honest man.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR
+
+
+The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all
+the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to
+make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple
+grove.
+
+Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge
+was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor
+black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me
+back again.
+
+Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as
+majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line
+about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on
+the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would
+quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence
+must be in hiding.
+
+When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping
+against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of
+waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness for
+me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed
+and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate
+had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
+
+There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, with
+all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.
+There was no sally-port in all this wall save one--the one that death
+had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,
+death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of
+the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisoner
+of life.
+
+There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it
+calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at
+any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me
+for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
+but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
+hands.
+
+It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
+this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
+sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
+vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
+spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
+
+It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
+who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
+turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
+linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
+theirs.
+
+No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
+'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
+a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
+suicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
+flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
+sharpened stake to pinion it.
+
+'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
+my father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
+the chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
+how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
+the suicide came to give me pause.
+
+Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
+seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best
+safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary
+baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
+make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
+widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
+compassing of his end.
+
+But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
+my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
+offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
+would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
+robbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate that
+was to blame?
+
+These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
+bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
+straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness
+was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again
+and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that
+love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.
+
+In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours of
+waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the
+mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward
+constrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.
+
+The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy
+of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to be
+gone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was
+done, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other
+blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the
+night, I sallied forth upon my errand.
+
+I've wished a thousand times, as I sit here before the fire and jot
+these memories down in crabbed black on white, that I could conjure up
+for you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the story
+moves.
+
+True, its hills and valleys are the same; the river keeps its course;
+and in the west the mountain sky-line is unchanged. But here similitude
+is at an end. You've hacked the virgin forest into shapes and fringes
+where once it was an ample mantle seamed only by the rivers, and frayed
+here and there at distant intervals by the settler's ax.
+
+Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged in
+its furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the
+mystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the
+centuries. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles,
+became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, the
+solitude laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way.
+But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof, and all the
+shadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright the
+alien-born.
+
+I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and loved
+these forest solitudes. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, the
+twilight shadows awed me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk
+so like a crouching panther that I sprang aside and had the steel half
+out before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a man
+gliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with
+me as if with sinister intent.
+
+I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though
+inwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. What
+threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to
+fear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack of
+clamor when they were beating up a cover.
+
+Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting
+furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of my
+eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked
+a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent
+home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree.
+
+"Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?"
+
+The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was
+become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the
+belt, standing so near he could have pricked me with his scalping knife.
+
+It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the
+friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.
+
+"Uncanoola?" said I.
+
+He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?"
+
+I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head.
+
+"No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him _that_ way," pointing back
+along the path.
+
+"How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile
+had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the
+stately Indian hyperbole.
+
+"Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long
+eyes--see heap things."
+
+"Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?"
+
+"Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"--he
+threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling
+snake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and find
+canoe--jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh
+and shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'"
+
+By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learned
+of my escape and was seeking me.
+
+"Is that all the chief saw?" I asked.
+
+"Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tell
+Captain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow."
+
+"The white squaw?" said I. "Who is she?"
+
+The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mere
+shaking of the ribs.
+
+"No can tell that, neither, too," he said. Then, with a swift dart aside
+from the subject: "Captain Long-knife care much 'bout black dogs
+yonder?"
+
+I knew he meant the negroes at the hunting lodge.
+
+"The white man cares for the black as a kind master should," I returned.
+
+The Indian spat upon the ground in token of his hatred and contempt for
+all the black skins in his fatherland. I never understood this bitter
+race antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well written
+out in many a bloody massacre of that earlier day.
+
+"The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before
+the moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken."
+
+I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace.
+
+"Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool on
+their heads?" he queried.
+
+"If need be," I asserted.
+
+"Wah!" he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth had
+swallowed him.
+
+I lost no time in indecision. Since Jennifer was abroad, I had no
+business at the plantations; and if Tomas and the other refugees were
+like to come to harm, I could do no less than hasten back to warn or
+help them.
+
+So I retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw no
+more shadows in the ancient wood--in truth, had much ado to see the
+single step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skyless
+depths.
+
+I was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that I could hear
+the murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of the
+tree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green and
+then to red. 'Twas like the childish Africans, I said, to draw a secret
+sentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise it
+far and wide. Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy--
+
+A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of
+the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stood
+and listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in its
+scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me
+sorely of the breath I wanted.
+
+The cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieu
+thereof, was but a niggard acre hemmed in on every side, save that
+toward the river, by the virgin forest. For cover there were holly
+thickets here and there, and into one of these I plunged, creeping on
+hands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.
+
+The scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lasting
+shapes upon the memory. A brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glow
+flaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. The open
+space around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to and
+fro; and in the gloom beyond the fire I saw a shadowy horseman backed by
+others still more phantom-like.
+
+There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound
+Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that
+band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the
+powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.
+
+This was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when I came to
+look again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before the
+burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with
+the eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my
+faithful Darius.
+
+By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why
+they slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was his
+death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest
+alive with ghastly echoes.
+
+At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my
+blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for
+vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth
+and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup,
+and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon
+the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade
+it.
+
+This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The other
+blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behind
+through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave
+to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of
+savage triumph.
+
+They flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, and
+though I caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping of
+the Indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.
+
+I could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he would
+not tell them what they wished to know--could not, indeed, since I had
+left no word behind to track me by--was quickly evident. A cord was
+found, and while I crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helpless
+as one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs and
+swung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such a
+matter before the cabin door.
+
+He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the
+hand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.
+But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury the
+Indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that
+should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the
+splits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.
+
+You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.
+Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as
+pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would
+Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses
+unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me
+nauseate with horror.
+
+As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round
+and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to
+hear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to
+freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the
+cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly
+brown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a
+plea: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! shoot po' nigga and let um die!"
+
+This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and
+lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to
+try to put him out of misery.
+
+The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust of
+blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse
+apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well
+within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with
+the night.
+
+I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the
+rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his
+horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling
+to run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of
+handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble
+to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew
+his sword.
+
+In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here
+again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him
+fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he
+would not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon
+his shoutings.
+
+That done, I snatched the musket that had cost the man his life, and,
+staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In the
+interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed
+its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues
+beneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough,
+the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with
+green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not
+be merciful.
+
+I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and
+make a mark I could not miss. The pause gave space for some swift
+steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a
+fierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger held
+a life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.
+
+I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas,
+and by the laws of God and man had earned his death. The tortured slave
+had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would
+give him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bullet
+planted in my enemy's heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving
+me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.
+
+All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round
+as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold
+on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One little
+crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.
+But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "O
+Massa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy--shoot po' nigga and let 'um die!"
+
+I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king's
+musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger
+of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.
+
+And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these
+fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I was
+surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle
+bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN WHICH A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP
+
+
+In such a coil as this I'd looped about me there was nothing for it, as
+it seemed, but to draw the steel and die as a soldier should. So I broke
+cover on the forest side of the holly thicket with a yell as fierce as
+theirs, and picked a tree to set my back against, and ran for it.
+
+I never reached the tree. In mid career, when all the Cherokee wolf pack
+was bursting through the holly tangle at my heels, two men, a white man
+and an Indian, ran in ahead, as I supposed to cut me off. Just then the
+dry roof of the hunting lodge roared aflame, reddening the forest far
+and near. The light was at my back and on the faces of the two who ran
+to meet me. A great sob swelled in my throat and choked me, but I ran
+the faster. For these were my dear lad and the friendly Catawba,
+charging gallantly to cover my retreat.
+
+It was a ready help in time of need. They ran in bravely, the chief
+ahead, twirling his tomahawk for the throw, with Dick a pace to right
+and rear, his two great pistols brandished and the grandsire of all the
+broadswords dangling by a thong at his wrist.
+
+"Follow the chief!" he shouted in passing; and at the word the Catawba
+stopped short, sent his hatchet whistling into the yapping pack behind
+me, and swerved to run aside and point the way for me.
+
+Left to myself, I hope I should have had the grace to stand with
+Jennifer. But at the turning point of indecision the quick-witted Indian
+read my thought, and snatching the sword from my hand, gave me no choice
+but to follow him.
+
+So I ran with him; but as I fled I looked behind and saw a sight to put
+the ancient hero tales to the blush. One man against two-score my brave
+Dick stood, while through the underwood the mounted soldiery came to
+make the odds still greater.
+
+He never flinched for all the hurtling missiles sent on ahead to cut him
+down, nor gave a glance aside to where the horsemen were deploying to
+surround him. As I looked, the two great pistols belched in the very
+faces of the nearest Cherokees; and in the momentary check the firearms
+made, the basket-hilted claymore went to work, rising and falling like a
+weaver's beam.
+
+I saw no more; but some heart-bursting minutes later, when Jennifer came
+racing on behind to share the flight his heroic stand had made a
+possibility, the swelling sob choked me once again; and when I thought
+of what this his rescue of me meant to him, I could have blubbered like
+a boy.
+
+But there was little time or space to give remorse an inning. The
+Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels.
+And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted
+men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, you
+devils!"
+
+We ran in Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I
+followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a
+man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down
+through a tangled briar thicket into the river road.
+
+We were in time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could
+hear the _pad-pad-pad_ of the light-footed runners close upon us,
+following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was
+trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck
+gallop down the road.
+
+"Thank God!" says Richard, with a quick eyeshot to right and left in the
+lesser gloom of the open. "I was afeard even the chief might miss the
+place in the dark. Down the bank to the river!--quick, man, and
+cautious! If they smell us out now, we're no better than buzzard-meat!"
+And when we reached the water's edge: "You taught me how to paddle a
+pirogue, Jack; I hope you haven't lost the knack of it yourself."
+
+"No," said I; and the three of us slid the hollowed log into the stream.
+
+We were afloat in shortest order, holding the canoe against the current
+by clinging to the overhanging trees that fringed the bank; yet with
+paddles poised for a second dash for freedom should the need arise. I
+should have dipped forthwith to save the precious minutes, but Jennifer
+stayed me.
+
+"Hist!" he whispered. "Hold steady and listen. They can not see us from
+above; mayhap we've thrown them off the scent."
+
+I thought it most unlikely; but his guess was right and mine was wrong.
+Though any of these savages could lift a trail in daylight, following it
+at top speed like a trained blood-hound, yet now the darkness baffled
+them.
+
+So there was some running to and fro in the road above our heads, and
+then the troopers galloped down. Followed hastily a labored confab
+through the linguister, broken in the midst by a fury of hot oaths from
+Falconnet; and then the chase swept on toward the plantations, and we
+were left to make their losing of us sure by whatsoever means we chose.
+
+We paddled slowly up stream in silence, keeping well within the blacker
+shadow of the tree fringe. When we came opposite the glowing ruins of
+the hunting lodge, Jennifer backed upon his paddle.
+
+"You'll go ashore?" said he.
+
+I said I would, adding: "They have slaughtered poor old Darius, and I am
+loath to leave his bones for the buzzards to pick."
+
+He made no comment other than to swear in sympathy. When the pirogue
+grounded, the Indian was out like a cat, to vanish phantom-wise among
+the trees. I followed in some clumsier fashion, leaving Jennifer to
+keep the canoe; but half way up the hill he joined me, and would not
+turn back for all my urging. "No; hang me if I'll let you out of
+eye-grip again," was all he would say; and so we went together, and were
+together at the seeing of what the glowing ember-heap would show us.
+
+Poor Tomas had his sepulture already. His cord had burned in two and let
+him down so close beside the cabin wall that all the blazing debris from
+the overhanging eaves had made his funeral pile. Darius lay as I had
+last seen him; and him we buried in the maize clearing at the back, with
+the ember glow for funeral lights.
+
+It was a chanceful thing to do. Since the Cherokees had left their dead
+and wounded, and Falconnet the body of his trooper who had yielded me
+the musket, there was small doubt they would return. Yet we had time to
+dig a shallow grave for my old henchman; to dig and fill it up again;
+and afterward to make a circuit round the burning pile to reach the
+river side once more.
+
+When we had launched the canoe, and were afloat and ready for the start,
+the Catawba was still missing.
+
+"Where is the chief, think you?" I asked; but Dick's answer, if, indeed,
+he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the
+silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long
+drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the
+pirogue stern to strand with a quick paddle stroke.
+
+"That last was Uncanoola's war cry; they've doubled back in time to
+catch him at it!" he cried. "Stand by to drive her when I give the word!
+Here he comes!"
+
+Down the sloping hillside, looking, in the red glow of the ember heap,
+more like a flying demon than a man, came the Catawba, one hand gripping
+the scalping-knife, the other flung aloft to flaunt his terrible
+trophies in sight of his pursuers. They were so close upon him that
+waiting promised death for all of us; so Jennifer dipped again to send
+the canoe a broad jump from the bank.
+
+"Ready!" he cried. "He'll take the water like a fish, and we can pick
+him up afterward--_Now_!"
+
+I heard the clean-cut dive of the Indian, and struck the paddle deep to
+balance Jennifer's stroke. But as I bent to put my back into it, some
+flying missile caught me fair behind the ear, and but for Jennifer's
+quick wit I should have swamped the crazy shallop. In a flash he jerked
+me flat between his knees and sent the pirogue with a mighty thrust
+beyond the zone of fire light.
+
+At that, though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough
+to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the
+spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But
+afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's
+paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this
+gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning
+lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once
+again a little child sinking asleep in my young mother's arms.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH
+
+
+'Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.
+No odds how long the night, 'tis but a moment from the lapse of
+consciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep that
+crept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling drip
+from Jennifer's paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I came
+awake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and broken
+dreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.
+
+The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed of
+bearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and by
+the flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls of
+the burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been the
+well-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark of
+human occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with the
+reek of many fires.
+
+When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, and
+Jennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as a
+tender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.
+
+"Know you? Why should I not?" I said, wondering why the words took so
+many breaths between.
+
+"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to
+babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim
+death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set
+me dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here
+upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with
+only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.
+
+"A week?" I queried, when he had named the interval. "And you have been
+here all the time?"
+
+"I've never left you, save to forage for the pot," he admitted. "I dared
+not leave you, Jack."
+
+"But where are we?" I would ask.
+
+"In a den on the river's edge, a mile or more above your sacked cabin.
+'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and shared
+since by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it.
+Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid."
+
+"Then the chief came off safely?" I said, falling into a dumb and
+impotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so of
+strength to say a third.
+
+"Right as a trivet--scalps and all," laughed Jennifer. "He'll be the
+envy of every warrior in the tribe when he vaunts himself at the
+Catawbas' council fire."
+
+I let it rest a while at that, casting about for words to shape a
+hungrier question.
+
+"Have you no news?" I asked, at length.
+
+"Little or none," he answered shortly.
+
+"But you have had some word--some news--from Appleby Hundred?" I
+stammered feebly.
+
+"Nothing you'd care to hear," he rejoined, evasively, I thought. "'Tis
+as you left it, save that Tarleton whipped away to the south again as
+suddenly as he came, and our cursing baronet has made the manor house
+his headquarters in fact, lodging himself and all his troop on Mr.
+Stair. From his lying quiet and keeping the Cherokees in tow, there will
+be some deviltry afoot, I'll warrant."
+
+I knew that Falconnet was waiting for the powder cargo, but another
+matter crowded this aside.
+
+"But--but Margery?" I queried, on sharpest tenter-hooks to know how much
+or little he had heard.
+
+I thought his brow darkened at the question, but mayhap it was only a
+shadow cast by the flickering fire. At any rate, he laughed hardily.
+
+"She is well--and well content, I dare swear. 'Twas only yesterday I saw
+her taking the air on the river road, with Falconnet for an escort. You
+told me once he had a sure hand with the women and it made me mad; but,
+truly, I have come to think you drew it mild, Jack."
+
+Now though I could ply a decent ready blade, or keep a firing line from
+lurching at a pinch, I had not learned to put a snaffle on a blundering
+tongue, as I have said before.
+
+"Damn him as you please, Dick, and he'll warrant it. But you must not
+judge the lady over harshly, nor always by appearances. She may have
+flouted you as a boyish lover, and yet I think--"
+
+I stopped in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenest
+agonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgot
+the gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsed
+into shamed silence, but Jennifer would not suffer it.
+
+"Well, what is it that you think?" he demanded.
+
+"I think--nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick," I
+blundered on, seeing no way to put him off.
+
+He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old love
+reawakening.
+
+"Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know what
+she thinks of me?" he broke in, eagerly.
+
+I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice my
+savior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship.
+I knew it--knew that the pregnant moment for full confession had
+arrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed,
+I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could make
+him understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So I
+paltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.
+
+"You forget that I have come to know her well," I said. "I was a month
+or more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me many
+things."
+
+Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.
+
+"What things?" he questioned, promptly.
+
+"Oh, many things. She spoke often of you."
+
+"What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "It
+can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me--nay,'tis
+even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh,
+Jack, I love her!--I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she
+stood by to spring the drop and turn me off!"
+
+Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, this
+passionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I must
+needs be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.
+
+"Another time, Richard. I am strangely unnerved and dizzy-headed now. By
+and by, when I am stronger, I will tell you all."
+
+Taking a reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimed
+malison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewed
+me a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I had
+drunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, he
+spread his coat to screen me from the fire light and would have driven
+me to sleep again.
+
+"At any rate, you shall not talk," he promised. "If you are wakeful I
+will talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about the
+fighting."
+
+His news was chiefly a later repetition of Father Matthieu's and Captain
+Abram Forney's, but there was this to add: the Congress had appointed
+the Englishman, Horatio Gates, chief of the army in the South, and this
+new leader was on his way to take command.
+
+De Kalb, with the Maryland and Delaware lines and Colonel Armand's
+legion, was encamped on Deep River, waiting for the newly-appointed
+general; and Caswell and Griffith Rutherford, with the militia, were
+already pressing forward to some handgrips with my Lord Cornwallis in
+the South.
+
+Nearer at hand, the partizan war-fire flamed afresh wherever a Tory
+company met a patriot, and there were wicked doings, more like savage
+massacres than fair-fought battles of the soldier sort.
+
+When he had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell me
+how he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the night
+of the cabin sack.
+
+"'Twas partly chance," he said. "A redcoat troop had me in durance at
+Jennifer House, and while they affected to hold me at parole, I never
+gave consent to that, and so was kept a prisoner. They shut me in the
+wine-bin with a guard, and when the fellow was well soaked and silly, I
+bound and gagged him and broke jail. I took the river for it, meaning to
+outlie until the hue and cry was over; and just at dusk Uncanoola
+dropped upon me and told me of your need. From that to helping him cut
+you out of your raffle with the Cherokees was but a hand's turn in the
+day's work."
+
+"A lucky turn for me," I said; and then at second thought I would deny
+the saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerous ground
+again, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-driven
+on a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, and
+where he got the antique claymore.
+
+He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.
+
+"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in
+'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first
+pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both
+sides--no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends
+for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."
+
+"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the low
+country settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.
+
+"They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. Mistress
+Flora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying,
+they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over,
+the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick of
+the fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us,
+came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-odd
+miles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for the
+prisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty--these
+and the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to my
+lot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow as
+ever skirled a pibroch."
+
+"That was like you," I said; "to make a friend and retainer out of your
+prisoner. And so this Highland piper has been your fencing master, has
+he?"
+
+"'Twas he taught me what little I know of the claymore play; and this
+stout old blade is his. 'Tis as good as a woodman's ax when you have the
+knack of swinging it."
+
+"Truly," said I. "Also, you seemed to have the knack, and the strength
+as well, in spite of the crippled arm you were carrying in a sling the
+night before when they haled you into Colonel Tarleton's court at
+Appleby."
+
+"A little ruse of war," he said, laughing and making a fist to show me
+his arm was strong and sound again. "'Twas M'Gillicuddy put me up to it,
+saying they would be like to deal the gentler with a wounded man. But
+how came you to know?"
+
+Here was another chance to tell him what he should be told, but the
+words would not say themselves.
+
+"I stood within arm's reach of you that night," said I; and from that I
+hastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it came
+to in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all.
+
+"You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when I
+had made an end of this recounting of my adventures. "He knows you are
+in hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well for
+you--or, more belike, for both of us."
+
+"How do you know this?" I asked.
+
+"I have both seen and heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge,
+and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twas
+just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past in the
+canoe."
+
+"But you say you have heard, as well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Don't ask me, Jack."
+
+I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this he
+blurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth.
+
+"Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess who
+it is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"'Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack," he said,
+bitterly. "It seems that Falconnet made sure we had both gone to join
+the army, which was but natural. If she were less than the spiteful
+little Tory vixen that she is, she would have been content to let it
+rest so. But she would not let it rest so. With her own lips she assured
+Falconnet he still had us to reckon with; nay, more--she made a boast of
+it that we would never go so far away from her."
+
+Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbow
+feebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.
+
+"Who slandered her like this, Dick? Put a name to the cur, and as I live
+and get my strength again, I'll hunt him down and choke him with that
+lie!"
+
+"Nay," he objected soberly; "that would be my quarrel, were there ever a
+peg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that is
+friendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeates
+by name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at Appleby
+Hundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoats
+and Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard one
+night when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. He
+says she was in a pretty passion at the baronet's slackness, stamping
+her foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of one
+or both of us."
+
+I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might
+of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce
+conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of
+the ways for the lover and the husband.
+
+Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he loved
+her--would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That was
+the lover's road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could I
+believe her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love could
+live beyond that moment of conviction.
+
+But at this perilous pass the husband's road ran truer than the lover's.
+Richard believed her capable of this hard-hearted thing and went on
+loving her blindly in spite of it. But as for me, I said I would never
+give belief an inch of standing-room; that had I stood in Ephraim
+Yeates's shoes, having the witness of my own eyes and ears, I would
+still have found excuse and exculpation for her.
+
+I stole a glance at Jennifer. He was sitting with his face in his hands,
+a silent figure of a strong man humbled. He had called her a Delilah,
+and the green withes of her binding cut sore into the flesh.
+
+"You say you love her, Dick; can you believe her capable of this, and
+yet go on loving her?" I asked.
+
+He let me see his face. It was haggard and grief-marred.
+
+"I'd pay the devil's own price could I say 'no' to that, Jack. But I can
+not."
+
+"Then I swear I love her better than you do, Richard Jennifer. She hates
+me well--God knows she has good cause to hate me fiercely; yet I would
+trust her with my life."
+
+I looked to see him pin me down at this; and though the words had
+fairly shaped and said themselves, I laid fast hold of my courage and
+was prepared to make them good. But he would only smile and draw the
+bearskin cover over me, tucking me in as tenderly as a mother, and
+saying very gently:
+
+"So she has bewitched you, too; and now there are two poor fools of love
+instead of one. But you are stronger than I, Jack. You will break the
+spell and put it down and live beyond it, and that I never shall--God
+help me!" And with that, he went to his own bed beside the fire, telling
+me I must lie quiet and try to sleep.
+
+I did lie quiet, but sleep came not, nor did I woo it. For long past the
+time when I could hear his measured breathing, I lay awake to plan how I
+might draw the baronet's man-hunt to myself, and so free my loyal
+Richard of the peril that by rights was mine.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SHOWING HOW LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+For some few days after Jennifer's narrow escape at the entrance to our
+hiding place, the Cherokees were hot upon our scent, quartering the
+forest on both banks of the river, determined, as it seemed, to hunt or
+starve us out.
+
+It was in this time of siege that I came to know, as I had not known
+before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad's love for me. While the
+life-tide was at its ebb and I was querulous and helpless weak, he was
+my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. And later, when the
+tide was fairly turned and I had found my soldier's appetite again, he
+spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess what risks he ran
+to fetch me dainties from the outer world.
+
+In this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from
+serving me. Once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and
+maize cake with plain cold water, I mourned the good wine idling in its
+bin at Jennifer House. At that, without a word to me, he took the whole
+night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the
+Jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its
+bringing had cost in toil and hazard.
+
+Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man
+at need--how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as
+before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone
+the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,--'twas Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's, I mistrusted, though Dick would never name the owner,
+and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.
+
+In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If
+he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could
+not have made him tenderer.
+
+'Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom
+friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I
+have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough
+and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the
+border-born.
+
+But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart,
+a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress
+he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about
+who made a business of their chivalry.
+
+With his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure
+that I was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all
+the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. As you have guessed,
+I had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how I had staked his
+chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate--staked and lost
+it. Now that it was gone, I saw how I had missed the golden opportunity;
+how I had weakly hesitated when delay could only make the telling
+harder.
+
+By tacit consent we never spoke of Margery. Richard's silence hung upon
+despair, I thought; and as for mine, since the husband's road and the
+lover's lay so far apart, I could not bring myself to speak of her. But
+she was always first in my thoughts in that time of convalescence, as I
+made sure she was in his; and at the last the hidden thing between us
+was brought to light.
+
+It was on a night some three weeks or more after my fever turn. Our
+larder had run low again, and Jennifer had spent the earlier hours of
+the night abroad--to little purpose, as it chanced. 'Twas midnight or
+thereabouts when he came swearing in to tell me that the Tories were out
+again to harry our side of the river afresh, and to make a refugee's
+begging of a bag of meal a thing of peril.
+
+"They'll starve us out in shortest measure at this rate," he prophesied.
+"They have trampled down all the standing corn for miles around, and
+this morning they burned the mill. 'Tis our notice to quit, and we'd
+best take it. There has been fighting to the south of us--a plenty of
+it--at Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, and elsewhere, and every man is
+needed. If you are strong enough to stand the march, we'll run the
+gantlet down the river in the pirogue and cut across from the lower ford
+to join Major Davie or Mr. Gates."
+
+I said I was fit enough, and would do whatever he thought best. And then
+I took a step upon the forbidden ground.
+
+"Falconnet is still at Appleby Hundred?" I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And you will join the army at the front and leave Margery to his tender
+mercies?"
+
+His laugh was bitter; so bitter that I scarce knew it for Richard
+Jennifer's.
+
+"Mistress Margery Stair is well, and well content, as I told you once
+before. She has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well
+hanged."
+
+"Nay, Richard; you judge her over-harshly. I fear you do not love her as
+her lover should."
+
+"Say you so? Listen: to-night I got as far as the manor house, being
+fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. God help me, Jack!
+I had it. They have scraped together all the Tory riff-raff this side of
+the river--Falconnet and the others--and are holding high revel at
+Appleby. Since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant
+enough of women of their own kidney, and I saw Madge dancing like any
+light o' love with every jackanapes that offered."
+
+"In her father's house she could not well do less," I averred, cut to
+the heart, as he was, and yet without his younger lover's jealousy to
+make me unjust.
+
+"Or more," he added, savagely. "'Tis as I say; she lacks nothing we can
+give her, and we'd as well be off about our business."
+
+I think he never had it in his heart to leave her in any threat of
+danger. But from his point of view there was no danger threatening her
+save that which she seemed willing enough to rush upon--a life of titled
+misery as Lady Falconnet. I saw how he would see it; saw, too, that his
+was the saner summing of it up. And yet--
+
+He broke into my musings with a pointed question. "What say you, Jack?
+'Tis but a little whiffet of a Tory jade who cares not the snap of her
+finger for either of us. The night is fine and dark. Shall we float the
+canoe and give them all the slip?"
+
+This was how it came to turn upon a "yes" or "no" of mine. I hesitated,
+I know not why. In the little pause the fire burned low between us, and
+the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye
+as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. The silence, too, was
+stifling. There was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of
+the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle
+in the throat of the dying.
+
+I've always made a scoff of superstition, and yet, my dears, a thousand
+questions in this life of ours must hang answerless to the crack of doom
+if you deny it standing-room. I knew no more than I have set down here
+of Margery's besetment; nay, I had every reason Richard Jennifer had to
+believe that she was well and well content, lacking nothing, save,
+mayhap, the freedom to marry where she chose.
+
+And yet, out of the stifling silence there came a sudden cry for help; a
+cry voiceless to the outward ear, but sharp and piercing to that finer
+inward sense; a cry so real that I would start and listen, marveling
+that Jennifer made no sign of having heard it.
+
+In the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a
+distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by
+the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and
+scattering the handful of fire where it struck.
+
+Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between
+his teeth upon our dallying.
+
+"Too late, by God!" he cried. "They've trapped us like a pair of blind
+moles!" And with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear
+again when he found no room to swing it in.
+
+Having the handier weapon, I slipped out before him, creeping on hands
+and knees till I could see the leafy screen at the den's mouth, and the
+shimmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it. There was
+no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as Jennifer had
+left it.
+
+To make assurance sure, I would have scrambled to the bank above; but
+at the moment Jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so I crept back into
+the burrow.
+
+"See here," he said, excitedly. "What a devil will you make of this?"
+
+He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again,
+and had sought and found the arrow. It was a blunt-head reed and no war
+shaft. And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken
+threads, was a little scroll of parchment.
+
+"'Tis the Catawba's arrow," said Jennifer, though how he knew I could
+not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.
+
+Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of
+Captain Stuart's that I had found and lost again. And on the margin of
+it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the
+bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling
+beside me, murmuring her "Holy Marys."
+
+"Read it," said I. "It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the
+heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about
+the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes," he broke in; "I've spelled it out. But this line added at
+the bottom--surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in
+Madge's hand!"
+
+He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we
+deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither
+greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.
+
+"If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"--here
+was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and
+then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come
+to me out of the darkness and silence: "_A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!_"
+
+We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.
+
+"You make it out?" said I, after a moment of strained silence.
+
+He nodded. "She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were
+boy and maid together."
+
+A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we
+were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the
+spring.
+
+It was Jennifer who spoke first. "'Twas meant for me," he said; and his
+voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.
+
+"No!" said I, curtly.
+
+"I say it was!"
+
+"Then you say the thing which is not."
+
+Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should
+have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. But he
+said no word of what had gone before.
+
+"You may give me the lie, if you like, John Ireton; I shall not strike
+you." He said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. Then he
+added, hotly: "You know well that word was meant for me!"
+
+At this--God forgive me!--my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him
+for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye
+of every woman he should meet. "She needs a man!" I raged, lost now to
+every sense of decent justice, "a man, I say! And to whom would she send
+if not to her--"
+
+I choked upon the word. He had risen with me, and we stood face to face
+in that grim earth-womb, snarling fiercely at each other across the
+narrow firelit space; two men with every tie to knit us close together,
+and yet--God save us all!--a pair of wild beasts strung up to the
+killing pitch because, forsooth, we must needs front each other across a
+deadline drawn by the finger of a woman!
+
+God knows what would have come of all this had my dear lad been as
+fierce a fool as I. 'Twas his good common sense that saved us both, I
+think, for when the savage rival madness was at its height he turned
+away, swearing we were the very pick and choice of a world of asses to
+stand thus feeling for each other's throats when, mayhap, the lady
+needed both of us.
+
+This brought me to my senses at a gallop, as you would guess; to them
+and to the lighting of the conscience fire within whereon to grill the
+wicked heart that but now had thirsted for a brother's blood.
+
+"Now God have mercy on us both!" I groaned. "Forgive me, Dick, if you
+can; I was as mad as any Bedlamite. If I have any claim on her, 'tis not
+of her good will, you may be sure. You have the baronet to fear--not
+me."
+
+He shook his head and pointed to the parchment--to the line in French.
+
+"Francis Falconnet was under the same roof with her--or at least in easy
+call--when she wrote that, Jack. He is no longer my rival--nor yours."
+
+His word set me thinking, and I would fall to picking out the strands
+that jealous wrath had woven for me into the web of happenings. Setting
+aside the story brought by Ephraim Yeates, there was no certain proof
+that she had ever favored the Englishman; nay, more, till I had come to
+be madly jealous of Falconnet, I had made sure that Jennifer was the
+favored one.
+
+At this, as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the
+lightning's flash, I saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had
+brought--saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword I
+had let fall when Dick had found the arrow.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" he asked, gently.
+
+"My sword!" I gasped. "We should have been half-way there by this.
+Yeates was misled. 'Tis Falconnet she fears. She was at bay--hark you,
+at bay and fair desperate. That word of hers to the baronet was her poor
+pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here--"
+
+He found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:
+
+"Come on! You can strew the dust and ashes on me later. You said you
+loved her the better, and I do believe it now, Jack! You trusted her, as
+I did not. We'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever
+it may be; and after that is done I'll make my bow and leave you a fair
+field."
+
+"Nay, nay; that you shall not, Dick," I began; but he was half-way
+through the narrow passage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword
+and the bearskin from his bed; and I was fain to follow quickly, leaving
+the protest all unfinished.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
+
+
+As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak
+when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and
+beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.
+
+Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm
+midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As
+I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the
+rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and
+sweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, were
+separate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse.
+Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to match
+the windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores sped
+backward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood that
+barely kissed the ripples in passing, the river lapped and gurgled,
+chuckling weirdly at the paddle plungings, and swirling aft in the
+longer reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a wavering
+finger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.
+
+With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was some
+little distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst with
+death, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion through
+the wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to come
+upon a sentry.
+
+Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guarded
+than that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, spared
+by my father twenty years before to be a grouse and pheasant cover, and
+fetching a compass of half a mile or more across the maize fields, came
+in among the oaks and hickories of the manor grounds.
+
+Still there was no sight nor sound of any enemy; no light of candles at
+the house, or of camp-fires beneath the trees.
+
+A little way within the grove, where the interlacing tree-tops made the
+darkness like Egyptian night, Jennifer went on all fours to feel around
+as if in search of something on the sward. Whereat I called softly to
+know what he would be at.
+
+He rose, muttering, half as to himself: "I thought I'd never be so far
+out of reckoning." Then to me: "A few hours since, the Cherokees were
+encamped just here. You are standing in the ashes of their fire."
+
+"So?" said I. "Then they have gone?"
+
+"Gone from this safely enough, to be sure. They have been gone some
+hours; the cinders are cold and dew wet."
+
+"So much the better," I would say, thinking only that now there would
+be the fewer enemies to fight.
+
+He clipt my arm suddenly, putting the value of an oath into his gripping
+of it.
+
+"Come awake, man; this is no time to be a-daze!" His whisper was a sharp
+behest, with a shake of the gripped arm for emphasis. "If the Indians
+are gone, it means that the powder train has come and gone, too."
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+I was still thinking, with less than a clod's wit, that this would send
+the baronet captain about his master's business, and so Margery would
+have surcease of him for a time, at least. But Jennifer fetched me awake
+with another whip-lash word or two.
+
+"Jack! has the night's work gone to your head? If Falconnet has got his
+marching orders you may be sure he's tried by hook or crook to play
+'safe bind, safe find,' with Madge. By heaven! 'twas that she was afeard
+of, and we are here too late! Come on!"
+
+With that he faced about and ran; and forgetting to loose his grip on my
+arm, took me with him till I broke away to have my sword hand free. So
+running, we came presently to the open space before the house, and,
+truly, it was well for us that the place was clean deserted; for by this
+we had both forgot the very name of prudence.
+
+Jennifer outran me to the door by half a length, and fell to hammering
+fiercely on the panel with the pommel of his broadsword.
+
+"Open! Mr. Stair; open!" he shouted, between the batterings; but it was
+five full minutes before the fan-light overhead began to show some faint
+glimmerings of a candle coming from the rooms beyond.
+
+Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled from
+within.
+
+"Be off, you runagates! Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!"
+
+Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out
+his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching of
+the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. There
+was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him
+on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs,
+breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, went
+screeching over us.
+
+Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing
+off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with a
+splintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It
+was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the
+old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave
+it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well
+blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing
+spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.
+
+We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither,
+as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which
+he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was
+alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his
+loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders
+of the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name till
+he should have his cue from us.
+
+Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathing
+space, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine in
+any bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and propped
+him in the corner of the high-backed hall settle.
+
+The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reigned
+supreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreck
+and litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struck
+off, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky with
+spilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass.
+
+I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup to
+pour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jennifer
+and his charge. The old man had come to some better sensing of
+things,--he had been vastly more frightened than hurt, as I
+suspected,--and to Richard's eager questionings was able to give some
+feebly querulous replies.
+
+"Yes, they're gone--all gone, curse 'em; and they've taken every plack
+and bawbee they could lay their thieving hands upon," he mumbled. "'Tis
+like the dogs; to stay on here and eat and drink me out of house and
+home, and then to scurry off when I'm most like to need protection."
+
+"But Madge?" says Richard. "Is she safe in bed?"
+
+"She's a jade!" was all the answer he got. Then the old man sat up and
+peered around the end of the settle to where I stood, cup and bottle in
+hand. "'Tis a Christian thought," he quavered. "Give me a sup of the
+wine, man."
+
+I served him and had a Scottish blessing for my wastefulness, because,
+forsooth, the broken bottle spilt a thimbleful in the pouring. I saw he
+did not recognize me, and was well enough content to let it rest thus.
+
+Richard suffered him to drink in peace, but when the cup was empty he
+renewed his asking for Margery. At this the master of the house,
+heartened somewhat by my father's good madeira, made shift to get upon
+his feet in some tremulous fashion.
+
+"Madge, d'ye say? She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced
+deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie
+Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to
+the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all
+that he should have learned from never any other lips but mine own. But
+Richard himself parried the impending stroke of truth, saying:
+
+"So she is safe and well, Mr. Stair, 'tis all I ask to know."
+
+"She is safe enough; safer by far than you are at this minute, my young
+cock-a-hoop rebel, now that the king--God save him!--has his own again."
+
+I turned quickly on the broad door-stone to look within. Out of doors
+the early August dawn was graying mistily overhead, but in the house the
+sputtering tallow dip still struggled feebly with the gloom. They stood
+facing each other, these two, my handsome lad, the pick and choice of a
+comely race, looking, for all his toils and vigils, fresh and fit; and
+the old man in his woolen dressing-gown, his wig awry, and his lean face
+yellow in the candle-light.
+
+"How is that you say, Mr. Stair?" says Dick. "The king--but that is only
+the old Tory cry. There will never be a king again this side of the
+water."
+
+The old man reached out and hooked a lean finger in the lad's
+buttonhole. "Say you so, Richard Jennifer? Then you will never have
+heard the glorious news?" This with a leer that might have been of
+triumph or the mere whetting of gossip eagerness--I could not tell.
+
+"No," says Richard, with much indifference.
+
+"Hear it, then. 'Twas at Camden, four days since. They came together in
+the murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor fool
+Gates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, is
+captured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds.
+And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with Sumter
+at Fishing Creek and caught him napping. Whereupon, Charlie McDowell and
+the over-mountain men, seeing all was lost, broke their camp on the
+Broad and took to their heels, every man jack of them for himself. So ye
+see, Dickie Jennifer, there's never a cursed corporal's guard left in
+either Carolina to stand in the king's way."
+
+He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson got
+by heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hope
+that it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truth
+appear in answer to a curt question.
+
+"'Tis beyond doubt?--all this, Mr. Stair?"
+
+The old loyalist--loyalist now, if never certainly before--sat down on
+the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded
+like the crumpling of new parchment.
+
+"You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest you
+learn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. There
+were some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here no
+longer ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man!
+but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?"
+
+"Yes," said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short of
+gospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser's
+wine cellar.
+
+"Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye no
+ill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'll
+hang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll say
+naught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir,
+and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'll
+enter a _nolle prosequi_ on that till you're amnestied and back, then
+you can pay me the damage of the broken lock and we'll cry quits."
+
+At this my straightforward Richard snorted in wrathful derision. However
+much he loved the daughter, 'twas clear he had small regard for the
+father.
+
+"Seeing we came to do you a service, Mr. Stair, I think we may set the
+blunderbuss and the handful of slugs over against the smashed door. And
+that fetches me back to our errand here. You say Madge is safe. Does
+that mean that you have spirited her away since last night?"
+
+"Dinna fash yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for your
+betters, sir!" rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as he
+did now and then in fear or anger.
+
+"Still I would know what you mean when you say she is safe," says
+Richard, whose determination to crack a nut was always proportioned to
+the hardness of the shell.
+
+Gilbert Stair cursed him roundly for an impertinent jackanapes, and then
+gave him his answer.
+
+"'Tis none of your business, Dickie Jennifer, but you may know and be
+hanged to you! She rode home with the Witherbys last night after the
+rout, and will be by this safe away in t'other Carolina where your
+cursed Whiggeries darena lift head or hand."
+
+"Of her own free will?" Dick persisted.
+
+"Damme! yes; bag, baggage, serving wench and all. Now will you be off
+about your business before some spying rascal lays an information
+against me for harboring you?"
+
+Richard joined me on the door-stone. The dawn was in its twilight now,
+and the great trees on the lawn were taking gray and ghostly shapes in
+the dim perspective.
+
+"You heard what he had to say?" said he.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"It seems we have missed our cue on all sides," he went on, not without
+bitterness. "I would we might have had a chance to fire a shot or two
+before the ship went down."
+
+"At Camden, you mean? That's but the beginning; the real battles are all
+to be fought yet, I should say."
+
+He shook his head despondently. "You are a newcomer, Jack, and you know
+not how near outworn the country is. Gilbert Stair has the right of it
+when he says there will be nothing to stop the redcoats now."
+
+I called to mind the resolute little handful under Captain Abram Forney,
+one of many such, he had told me, and would not yield the point.
+
+"There will be plenty of fighting yet, and we must go to bear a hand
+where it is needed most," said I. "Where will that be, think you? At
+Charlotte?"
+
+He looked at me reproachfully.
+
+"This time 'tis you who are the laggard in love, John Ireton. Will you
+go and leave Mistress Margery wanting an answer to her poor little cry
+for help?"
+
+I shrugged. "What would you? Has she not taken her affair into her own
+hands?"
+
+"God knows how much or little she has had to say about it," said he.
+"But I mean to know, too, before I put my name on any company roll." We
+were among the trees by this, moving off for safety's sake, since the
+day was coming; and he broke off short to wheel and face me as one who
+would throttle a growling cur before it has a chance to bite. "We know
+the worst of each other now, Jack, and we must stand to our compact. Let
+us see her safe beyond peradventure of a doubt; then I'm with you to
+fight the redcoats single-handed, if you like. I know what you will
+say--that the country calls us now more than ever; but there must needs
+be some little rallying interval after all this disaster, and--"
+
+"Have done, Richard," said I. "Set the pace and mayhap I can keep step
+with you. What do you propose?"
+
+"This; that we go to Witherby Hall and get speech with Mistress Madge,
+if so be--"
+
+"Stay a moment; who are these Witherbys?"
+
+"A dyed-in-the-wool Tory family seated some ten miles across the line in
+York district. True, 'tis a rank Tory hotbed over there, and we shall
+run some risk."
+
+"Never name risk to me if you love me, Richard Jennifer!" I broke in.
+"What is your plan?"
+
+His answer was prompt and to the point. "To press on afoot through the
+forest till we come to the York settlement; then to borrow a pair of
+Tory horses and ride like gentlemen. Are you game for it?"
+
+I hesitated. "I see no great risk in all this, and whatever the hazard,
+'tis less for one than for two. You'd best go alone, Richard."
+
+He saw my meaning; that I would stand aside and let him be her succor if
+she needed help. But he would not have it so.
+
+"No," he said, doggedly. "We'll go together, and she shall choose
+between us for a champion, if she is in the humor to honor either of us.
+That is what 'twill come to in the end; and I warn you fairly, John
+Ireton, I shall neither give nor take advantage in this strife. I said
+last night that I would stand aside, but that I can not--not till she
+herself says the killing word with her own lips."
+
+"And that word will be--?"
+
+"That she loves another man. Come; let us be at it; we should be well
+out of this before the plantation people are astir."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+HOW A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS
+
+
+Having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to the
+fields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarters
+where the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and so
+to cross in our canoe.
+
+The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair
+weather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloud
+bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize
+blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.
+
+In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave
+but for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the higher
+tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly to
+deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where
+there was none.
+
+Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned
+the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by
+keeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin wood was free of
+undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. Fireside tradition
+on the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearly
+burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer.
+I vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for the
+fact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-like
+stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's own
+building, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countless
+trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined
+arches overhead.
+
+Through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, as
+I have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction
+served. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at
+feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on
+we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset
+undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle
+with the bushes.
+
+It was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purring
+of the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff
+the air.
+
+"Smoke," he said, briefly, in answer to my query. "A camp-fire, with
+meat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it."
+
+I said I could not--did not, at all events.
+
+"Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up your
+woodcraft and we'll stalk it." And, suiting the action to the word, he
+dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of
+the thicket.
+
+I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze
+with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a
+youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was
+well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could
+be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and
+tiger-strong to spring.
+
+In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the
+brink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow
+ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bit
+of grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it was
+sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a
+branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if
+to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned;
+and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a
+cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.
+
+One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirt
+and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leather
+fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he wore
+a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap
+his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the
+other tasselings in countenance. The hunting-shirt was belted at the
+waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to
+serve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs crossed upon his
+shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the
+knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.
+
+The other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all our
+southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of
+ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his
+leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an
+arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the
+scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, but
+far more vicious looking.
+
+For a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine,
+neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling must
+needs let out a yell.
+
+"Now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet.
+But at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was sent
+tumbling with the small landslide of clay down upon the twain at the
+fire.
+
+It went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at the
+fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot
+brought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was the
+quicker, Richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, I
+think. At the trigger-pulling instant the Catawba thrust the thick of
+his hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless for
+Jennifer, into the palm of the Indian.
+
+"Wah!" he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. "No want kill Captain
+Jennif', hey?"
+
+Ephraim Yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand held
+fast by the gun-flint.
+
+"Well, I'm daddled, fair and square, Cap'n Dick!" he declared. "Jest one
+more shake of a dead lamb's tail, and I'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartain
+sure! I allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-away
+behint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son."
+
+Dick laughed and called to me to follow as I could. And his answer to
+the old borderer was no answer at all.
+
+"'Tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with that
+deer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton and
+I, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
+
+At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work
+hospitably on the meat supply. Meanwhile I came upon the scene,
+something less hurriedly than Richard. Ephraim Yeates looked me up and
+down with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and a
+third for the German ritter-boots I wore.
+
+"Umph!" said he. "Now if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighter
+again! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on a
+stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" Then to me, most pointedly:
+"Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez I
+allow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up on
+the briars."
+
+He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair's
+parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed with
+him.
+
+"Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates," said I. "I am too near
+famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast."
+
+Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat
+upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.
+
+"Whoop!" he yelled. "No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out
+to call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, you
+infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye
+in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail
+top-knot o' your'n! _Yip-pee!_"
+
+By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
+might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
+stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
+countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
+capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.
+
+For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
+senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
+out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
+wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
+promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
+trick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which sent
+him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
+landslide.
+
+The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
+When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
+sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.
+
+"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
+Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meat
+with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
+friend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
+or'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from now
+on, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of
+which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
+colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.
+
+As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,
+pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he
+would never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon the
+deer's meat which was by this time--not cooked, to be sure, but seared a
+little on the outside in true hunter fashion.
+
+While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return
+Ephraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to the
+letter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery's
+father had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered to
+the four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted
+and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was
+carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of
+his men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming in
+all the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the
+outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as King
+George himself could wish.
+
+"But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like
+all the others?" Richard would ask.
+
+The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed
+meat. "I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on
+the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?"
+
+The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on to
+explain.
+
+"Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, for
+spying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but
+'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twas
+a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to
+sneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees."
+
+"Well?" says Dick.
+
+The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to
+impale it on the forked toasting stick.
+
+"Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's our
+A-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,
+heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'--which is good
+Injun-talk for anything ye like,--and so here we are, hot-foot on the
+trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."
+
+"Alone?" said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this
+chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.
+
+The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "We ain't sich tarnation
+big fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallop
+us, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. But
+there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and
+raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?"
+
+But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy
+left Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests had
+traveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet and
+his troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,
+or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistress Margery riding her
+own black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, had
+passed some two hours later.
+
+This was as we had hoped it might be; but when Dick's satisfaction
+would have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign for
+silence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to the
+ground. Whereat we all began likewise to listen, but I, for one, heard
+nothing till Yeates said: "A hoss; a-taking the back track like old Jehu
+the son of Nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur," and then we all
+marked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.
+
+The old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, and
+caught up his rifle. "Let's be a-moving," he said. "We must make out to
+stop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's a
+rip-snorting that-away for."
+
+The road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfast
+camp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, a
+negro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearing
+down to the ford. At sight of us, or else because he would not take the
+water at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily,
+carrying his skilless rider with him.
+
+We picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found his
+tongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to fire
+the blood in our veins--in Jennifer's and mine, at any rate.
+
+"Yah!" he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nigh
+strangled him. "Yah! red debbil Injins kill ebberybody and tote off
+Mistis Marg'y and dat Jeanne 'ooman! Dat's what dey done!"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+IN WHICH WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE
+
+
+It was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected
+account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all
+save the principal fact of the carrying off of Mistress Margery and her
+maid was hazy enough.
+
+Pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the
+foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party
+of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a
+creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress
+and her tire-woman had been captured.
+
+So far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen
+nothing. There had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black
+darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of Indian yells, shouts from the
+men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
+newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
+he knew no more till some one--his master, as he thought--kicked him
+alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
+Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
+and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.
+
+Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
+his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,
+it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his
+orders was his master. In the darkness and confusion he could make sure
+of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and
+the wording of the message he carried.
+
+When we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him
+once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried
+council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one.
+Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim
+Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without
+a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for
+going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should
+promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy
+exhaustion, starvation and failure.
+
+We grew hot upon it, Richard and I; he with a young lover's unrecking
+rashness, and I with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn;
+and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba drew aside and let us have it out.
+Dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not
+above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age
+in my face and swearing hotly that I knew not so much as the alphabet of
+love.
+
+The taunts were passed in silence, since I would set them over against
+the irrevocable wrong I had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he
+could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of
+jealous wrath.
+
+But when he would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all
+unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a
+long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The
+hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer
+heat we would be forced to kill daily. On the other hand, with horses, a
+bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should be in some more
+hopeful case; and, notwithstanding the delay in starting, could make far
+better speed.
+
+For all the good it did I might have spared my pains and saved my
+breath. Jennifer broke me in the midst, crying out that I was even now
+killing the precious minutes; and so our ill-starred venture had its
+launching in the frenzied haste that seldom makes for speed. One small
+concession I wrung out of his impatience--this with the help of Yeates
+and the Catawba. We went back to the breakfast camp, rekindled the fire,
+and cooked what we could keep and carry of the venison.
+
+In spite of this delay it was yet early in the forenoon of that
+memorable Sunday, the twentieth of August, when we set our faces
+southward and took up the line of march to the ford of the ambushment.
+By now the sky was wholly overcast, and the wind was blowing fresher in
+the tree-tops; but though as yet the storm held off, the air was the
+cooler for the threatened rain and this was truly a blessing, since the
+old hunter put us keen upon our mettle to keep pace with him.
+
+We marched in Indian file, Ephraim Yeates in the lead, Uncanoola at his
+heels, and the two of us heavier-footed ones bringing up the rear.
+Knowing the wooded wilderness by length and breadth, the old man held on
+through thick and thin, straight as an arrow to the mark; and so we had
+never a sight of the road again till we came out upon it suddenly at the
+ford of violence.
+
+Here I should have been in despair for the lack of any intelligible hint
+to point the way; and I think not even Jennifer, with all his woodcraft,
+could have read the record of the onfall as Yeates and the Catawba did.
+But for all the overlapping tangle of moccasin and hoof prints neither
+of these men of the forest was at fault, though ten minutes later even
+their skill must have been baffled, inasmuch as the first few spitting
+raindrops were pattering in the tree-tops when we came upon the ground.
+
+"That's jest about what I was most afeard of," said the borderer, with a
+hasty glance skyward. "Down on your hunkers, Chief, and help me read
+this sign afore the good Lord takes to sending His rain on the jest and
+the unjest," and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground
+like trained dogs nosing for a scent.
+
+We stood aside and watched them, Richard and I, realizing that we were
+of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the
+laying on of hearty blows. After the closest scrutiny, which took
+account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged
+until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in
+the dusty road, Yeates and the Indian gave over and came to join us
+under the sheltering branches of an oak.
+
+"'Tis a mighty cur'is sign; most mighty cur'is," quoth the hunter,
+slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his
+rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every
+precious grain. "Ez I allow, I never heerd tell of any Injuns a-doing
+that-away afore; have you, Chief? hey?"
+
+The Catawba's negative was his guttural "Wah," and Ephraim Yeates,
+having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his
+powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.
+
+"Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying. Them Injuns fixed up an ambush_ment_,
+blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up
+with a tomahawk and knife rush,--lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb
+daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. And, spite of all this here
+rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole
+enduring scrimmage! Mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? And that ain't
+all: some o' them same Injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing
+boots with spurs onto 'em. What say, Chief?"
+
+Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other.
+"Sebben Injun; one pale-face," he said, in confirmation.
+
+I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty
+curse to speed it.
+
+"Falconnet!" said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.
+
+"'Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon," drawled
+Yeates. "Maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving
+at."
+
+Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent. 'Twas out of all reason
+to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a
+terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. It was a curious
+mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.
+
+"And yit that ain't all. Whilst some o' the Injuns was a-whooping it up
+acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their
+city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the
+side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks
+him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after
+which he climbs _his_ hoss and makes tracks hisself--not to ketch up
+with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across
+the creek and down the road to the southward.
+
+Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest
+fashion, and after all could only say: "You are sure you have the
+straight of it, Eph?"
+
+The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. "Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of
+your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read
+them sign like they'd ort to be read?"
+
+"Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye--sharp nose--sharp tongue, sometime.
+Sign no can lie when he read 'um."
+
+Jennifer turned to me. "What say you, Jack? 'Tis all far enough beyond
+me, I'll confess."
+
+I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do
+seemed plain enough.
+
+"Never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis Mistress Margery's hazard that
+concerns us," I would say. And then to Ephraim Yeates: "Will this rain
+kill the trail, think you?"
+
+He shook his head dubiously. "I dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o'
+differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. Ez it starts out, with
+the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the
+run."
+
+"Then let us be at it," said I. "We can very well afford to let the
+mystery untangle itself as we go." And with this the pursuit began in
+relentless earnest.
+
+The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right
+angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the
+stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in
+the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could
+follow at a smart dog-trot.
+
+In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied
+Jennifer and me. They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the
+racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse.
+Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when,
+well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and
+to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow
+Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and
+gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.
+
+This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began
+again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail,
+measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars
+for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. When we came up with
+him he was mumbling to himself.
+
+"Um-hm; jes' so. They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure;
+larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. Now, says I to
+myself, what's the tarnation hurry? Ain't they got all the time there is
+to get where they're a-going, immejitly, _if_ not sooner?" Then he
+turned upon me. "Cap'n John, can't you and the youngster lay your heads
+side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up
+to? It do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that
+Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave
+a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could
+follow at a canter."
+
+Richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was
+to the full as blank as his. I made sure some deep-laid plot was at the
+bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the
+wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and
+sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all
+its devilish ingenuity.
+
+But now "Forward," was the word, and we fell in line again, and again
+the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack
+of weariness. Happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day
+dusk came early; and though Yeates and the Indian, running now with
+their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long
+after Richard Jennifer and I were bat-blind for any seeing of the
+hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were,
+fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a
+scanty supper.
+
+After the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter
+fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to
+sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the
+full as miserable.
+
+Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget;
+a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and
+step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous
+hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame
+for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp
+foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her
+into sending the appeal for help?
+
+With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message,
+hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own.
+Though I made sure she did not love me,--had never loved me as other
+than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
+the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
+her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.
+
+Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
+what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
+were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
+been sent.
+
+His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
+his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
+creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to
+spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
+him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.
+
+I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
+shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
+doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,
+making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of
+some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in
+that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender
+chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time
+when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in
+her service.
+
+So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of
+service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather
+fresh strength for the new day's measure.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE
+
+
+'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to
+picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in
+the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details
+have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are
+often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.
+
+So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest
+ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper
+and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the
+plain-marked trail to guide us.
+
+At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles
+of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the
+August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the
+pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling
+mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no
+woman-ridden horse could penetrate.
+
+One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances
+would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with
+here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn,
+whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and
+arabesques against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain
+would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the
+trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay,
+sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.
+
+Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of
+fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in
+a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting
+us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a
+soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless
+mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or
+exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop
+forever.
+
+This was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of
+strenuous onpressing. But through that web the scarlet thread of famine
+shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the
+days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair
+skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present
+specter of starvation.
+
+You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty
+memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts
+the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him
+onward. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned
+upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. One was Yeates's
+killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we
+had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's
+code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also,
+I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the
+hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And,
+being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the
+hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.
+
+The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days
+farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we
+could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and
+enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for
+game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for
+another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along
+the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this
+haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or
+to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and
+now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to
+the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the
+famine edge of hunger.
+
+For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on
+any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the
+unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to
+set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian
+there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the
+less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and
+held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old
+hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can
+close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates,
+striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry
+and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest
+discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder.
+Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been
+less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his
+own would have shamed us into following where he led.
+
+We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the
+pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before
+Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing
+in upon our quarry.
+
+The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the
+beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching
+out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless
+well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their
+impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let
+us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper
+food soon took toll of speed.
+
+So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last
+so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires
+were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer--could
+hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent
+us double.
+
+The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the
+fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air
+in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an
+oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher
+with every added mile of westering.
+
+The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a
+rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly
+from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part
+of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly
+sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim
+Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped
+behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running
+at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped
+and swallowed him.
+
+A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless
+noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good
+time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted
+echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's
+rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all
+a-clamor with mocking repetitions.
+
+"Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the
+marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "That there's what comes
+o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the
+gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you
+two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them
+sharp-p'inted sticks in his--The Lord be praised for all His marcies!
+the chief's got him!"
+
+But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping
+with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell
+had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old
+borderer's bullet.
+
+"Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out
+of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and
+fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.
+
+This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a
+little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well
+in hand. So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by
+a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. Nevertheless, we
+were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew
+to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither
+seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.
+
+That night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a
+swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. We reached
+this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into
+the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. But
+though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was
+exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to
+wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.
+
+We guessed at it a while, Richard and I, and then gave it up until we
+might have the help of better daylight. But the old borderer's curiosity
+was not so readily postponed. Cutting a slim pole from a sapling
+thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping
+branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond
+a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for
+swimming.
+
+Satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us
+to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his
+long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes
+the nearer to the ground.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR
+
+
+Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us cause
+to wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indian
+pipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipe
+was aglow he told us of his findings.
+
+"'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spell
+to throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up."
+
+"That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?" said I; for
+the night was black as Erebus.
+
+"Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts," this as calmly as
+if we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-defined
+trace of foot-prints. "Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped on
+t'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. I
+saw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals."
+
+"Thank God!" says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the women
+were already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with an
+eager question: "How does she look, Ephraim?--tell me how she looks!"
+
+"Listen at him!" said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "How
+in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about?
+There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been
+dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week.
+Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on
+'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' last
+idintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a couple
+of Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmints
+their orders, partic'lar."
+
+Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.
+
+"Show us the way, Eph Yeates!" he burst out impatiently. "We are wasting
+a deal of precious time!"
+
+But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making no
+move to head a sortie.
+
+"Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o'
+hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full
+redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez
+soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle
+down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly,
+_if_ not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by
+rampaging 'round too soon."
+
+There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited,
+taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and laying
+our plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, or
+rather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move upon
+the enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover the
+ford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed,
+we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal,
+which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in and
+smite, giving no quarter.
+
+The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, saying
+that a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Erati
+tribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.
+
+"Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-setting
+on ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. With
+them gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for a
+skimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore and
+wherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and come
+again, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer."
+
+Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth that
+we were not like to be over-merciful.
+
+But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspected
+side of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily on
+the sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinced
+a most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hour
+the air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermon
+paused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his knees
+to pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories of
+the grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.
+
+Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully
+understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he
+was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness
+that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin or
+red coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that
+British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very
+edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall
+upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his
+prayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scriptural
+anathema upon the enemy.
+
+Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most
+godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that
+since he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--he
+would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon
+his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have
+said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the
+sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of
+place.
+
+It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead
+piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but
+when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to
+me.
+
+"What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I
+reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here
+purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's."
+
+Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have
+not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to
+weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to
+strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil
+moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old
+field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward
+the dawn.
+
+Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little
+good-will.
+
+"I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted,
+angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst
+you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no
+soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your
+damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these very
+present seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down in
+the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully
+over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.
+
+Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the
+old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck
+of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping
+through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time
+precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.
+
+Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept
+down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of
+crossing.
+
+Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of
+quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.
+
+Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse
+to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire
+like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. The
+seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins,
+which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.
+Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest
+sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half
+awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm
+and he was nodding to forgetfulness.
+
+Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I
+could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.
+
+"It should be easy enough--what think you?" he whispered; and then, with
+a sudden grasp upon my wrist: "You are cool and steady-nerved, John
+Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!"
+
+"Nay, I grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitement
+would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added,
+sincerely enough: "She has never given me the right to love her at all."
+
+"God help her at this pass!" he said, more to himself than to me; and
+then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim
+Yeates for this fresh delay.
+
+It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.
+
+"Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.
+Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe Captain
+Jennif' see 'um, hey?"
+
+At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were
+nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The
+Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared
+to be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only
+one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eye
+on war-path!"
+
+Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within
+arm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but the
+old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle
+to my fingers' ends.
+
+"How will it be, Eph?" Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We can
+make it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!"
+
+But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.
+
+"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick.
+She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like
+greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought
+n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country;
+but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the
+ford where them varmints made out to cross."
+
+"God!" said Dick, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"
+
+The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the
+encampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly and
+clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.
+
+"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whisper
+meant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal,
+Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain't
+in it!"
+
+I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a
+handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry
+wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the
+keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy
+background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in
+orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry
+branches their leader gave the command to charge.
+
+What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest
+space. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings,
+raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.
+As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the
+yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemen
+narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel
+in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and
+vanished as if by magic.
+
+With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the
+sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and
+it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din,
+being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of
+the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and
+when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees,
+the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the
+lady.
+
+"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we
+did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across
+the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.
+
+"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet,
+mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and
+got them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages have
+given us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet,
+calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."
+
+I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months
+since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred,
+and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of
+the captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had
+stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pass
+from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping
+from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe
+her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful
+than ever.
+
+"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said.
+"You have come to take us back to my father?"
+
+He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.
+
+"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.
+But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know,
+and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are here
+only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for
+theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to
+the west; but I do assure you--"
+
+She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a
+despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing
+hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and
+wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all
+that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if
+only with a single soldier for a guard.
+
+'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he
+had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his
+life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused
+her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his
+suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a
+true, clean-hearted woman at bay.
+
+"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain
+Falconnet?" she said.
+
+"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these
+brutal savages, Mistress Margery?"
+
+She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down
+and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the
+scornful eyes were whipping him.
+
+"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in
+the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I
+saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken
+freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor
+Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."
+
+The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was
+taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have
+dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.
+
+"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did
+with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?
+'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for my
+game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,
+be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme
+désespéré, ma chérie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry
+you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might
+have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go
+where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady
+Falconnet!"
+
+The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,
+was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four
+would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;
+nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of
+us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would
+be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.
+
+So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass and
+brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised
+his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because
+the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare
+the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come
+within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping
+coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we
+would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped
+us with a hand for each.
+
+"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats,
+and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.
+Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a
+good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that
+ain't teched yet."
+
+It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear
+doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and
+not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless
+little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.
+
+"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she
+said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having
+the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is
+all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."
+
+"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his
+horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the
+women, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, Mistress
+Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's
+house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry
+you for very shame's sake!"
+
+It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has
+ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian
+discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide
+snake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think
+she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight
+helped her to say, quickly:
+
+"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."
+
+His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith with
+me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"
+
+He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set
+her foot upon the weapon in the grass.
+
+"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the
+occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are
+has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save
+you from that, my Mistress."
+
+She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured
+and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one
+who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.
+
+"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing him
+bravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will give
+me leave to die as my mother's daughter should."
+
+"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we
+looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses,
+and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives
+as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers
+of the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and
+on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the
+horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.
+
+Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse
+me bitterly.
+
+"Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments,
+John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had
+good hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and that
+hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"
+
+He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew,
+and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would
+eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in
+sheer abandonment of rage and misery.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS
+
+
+You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to
+me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our
+chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to
+attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to
+the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford
+beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the
+earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.
+
+So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of
+afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame
+as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.
+
+"Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair _and_ easy," he protested. "Let's give
+that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow,
+there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things.
+To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here
+dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had
+ne'er a man o' God 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going
+to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n Dick did try his hand that-away."
+
+"True; and I would now we had listened to him," said I, gloomily enough.
+"We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another.
+Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder
+train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered
+us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy
+forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my
+Lord Cornwallis's headquarters."
+
+The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for
+merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could
+understand.
+
+"Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from
+yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I
+be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead."
+
+Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on
+the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope
+when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a
+certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long
+after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the
+full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.
+
+"That's the kind o' talk!" was the old man's comment. "Now we'll set to
+work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is
+crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe
+you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd
+vouchsafe to give us scalps _and_ provender. For our onfaithfulness He's
+seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a
+widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness,
+yit."
+
+So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when
+Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should
+make another effort to find the ford.
+
+"There's nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into
+trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way
+cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n Dick
+rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only
+say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the
+chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when
+his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone
+over his head. Selah!"
+
+Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy
+dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far
+beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along
+the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel
+and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had
+lost.
+
+"Right about here-away is where they made out to cross," he announced;
+"the whole enduring passel of 'em, ez I reckon--our seven varmints and
+the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till
+we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side."
+
+We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's
+edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and
+so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the
+water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there
+was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our
+faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with
+the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.
+
+Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's horsemen set us
+warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been
+left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.
+
+"Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left
+behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I
+was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last
+living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the
+belly-pinch."
+
+So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune
+favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two
+horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag
+of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive
+party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.
+
+With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And
+now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few
+handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn
+stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag
+of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on
+our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn
+into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the
+baking-stones.
+
+In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard
+bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten--with
+what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever
+know--we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and
+far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had
+entangled us.
+
+For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear
+lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and
+sure; a _coup de main_ which should atone in one shrewd push for the
+sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to
+the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else
+to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.
+
+You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and
+protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old
+chronicler's day.
+
+Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh
+that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century
+nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on--in the story-books. Also, I
+would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace
+of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call "heroics"
+were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural
+heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm
+that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean
+fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry
+world to live in.
+
+So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and,
+after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us
+while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to snatch an hour
+or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin
+afresh.
+
+In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw
+not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid
+on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: "Are you waking yet,
+Jack?"
+
+I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and
+shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse
+me.
+
+"You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a
+friend--to fly out at you like a madman as I did," he added, by way of
+fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding
+him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.
+
+"The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as
+you will some day know, Dick, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward
+always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never
+make.
+
+He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.
+
+"Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to
+blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I
+owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in
+that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left
+me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas--"
+
+"Damn you!" I broke in roughly, "will you never have done and go to
+sleep?" And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh
+bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY
+
+
+Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the
+wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping
+unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the
+enemy.
+
+But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that the
+players rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, never
+faltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip their
+kinship with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not so
+endowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase,
+with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakeful
+eye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept;
+would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice as
+great.
+
+We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, and
+were the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter was
+already out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and was
+grinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. Dick sat up in
+his leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.
+
+"Lord, Jack," said he; "if ever we win out of this coil with a full day
+to spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, I
+promise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough to
+leave a bad taste in the mouth."
+
+"Aye; but the taste may be washed out," said I. "I am for a dip in the
+river; what say you?"
+
+He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in the
+spring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.
+'Twas most marvelous refreshing; and with appetites sharp set and
+whetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in time
+to give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with the
+hindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across his
+shoulders.
+
+Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of the
+dawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we were
+made to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the early
+morning scouting.
+
+Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle of
+reconnaissance around our halting place, "to get the p'ints of the
+compass," as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we had
+found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and
+well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder
+train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and
+arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short
+march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's
+position.
+
+For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. The
+Indian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of the
+cavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straight
+into the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rocky
+defile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements to
+narrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to a
+thundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powder
+convoy had vanished into thin air.
+
+Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.
+We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women;
+but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the
+powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were
+wholly unprepared.
+
+So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched;
+and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we had
+broken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to the
+gorge of disappearance.
+
+On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left
+swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for
+its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and
+lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valley
+narrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base of
+the tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on the
+right.
+
+In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's
+stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the
+right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and
+plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side
+of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down
+into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.
+
+As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve the
+mystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouring
+torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the
+cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended
+abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the
+low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet
+and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier
+stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed
+it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently
+came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof
+print, new or old.
+
+"Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est
+thing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, when
+we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to
+the mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?"
+
+Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go
+down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?"
+
+The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative.
+"Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the
+good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'
+the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of
+up."
+
+We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a
+fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its
+underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed
+into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood
+which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive
+with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was
+only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates
+caught at it eagerly.
+
+"Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take
+an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!
+Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'
+sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"
+
+I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick
+asked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?"
+
+The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety
+of it in words.
+
+"Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened
+the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"
+
+"Why, fire," says Richard, beginning, as I did, to see some glimmering
+of light.
+
+"In course. And it come from yonder, didn't it?" pointing to the cavern
+under the cliff. "More than that, 'twas cut wi' a hatchet--this fresh
+end of it--no longer ago than last night, at the furdest; the pitch that
+the fire fried out'n it is all soft and gummy, yit. Gentlemen all:
+whenst we find where this here creek comes out into daylight again we're
+a-going to find the hoss-captain and the whole enduring passel o'
+redskins and redcoats, immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
+
+What comment this startling announcement would have evoked I know not,
+for at the moment of its utterance the Catawba went flat upon the
+ground, making most urgent signs for us to do likewise. What he had seen
+we all saw a flitting instant later; the painted face of a Cherokee
+warrior as a setting for a pair of fierce basilisk eyes peering out of
+the low-arched cavern whence the stream issued, an apparition looking
+for all the world like a dismembered head floating on the surface of the
+outgushing flood.
+
+'Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat,
+and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers. A crook in the
+stream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from the
+basilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another into
+the mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.
+
+Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main river;
+but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows in
+passing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain a
+great boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon the
+scene of our late surprisal.
+
+By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage for
+a tragedy which might have been ours. One by one a score of heads with
+painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one
+the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the
+water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the
+stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching
+figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.
+
+Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his
+thigh.
+
+"They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillern
+and simples," he whispered. "Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up the
+trace a hour 'r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o' that there spy, and
+was too dad-blame' biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean."
+
+"What spy?" says Dick, matching the hunter's low whisper.
+
+"Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here 'twixt dawn and
+daybreak, _to_ be sure. He waited till we broke camp and then took out
+up here ahead of us to tell his chief 'twas e'ena'most time to set the
+trap for three white simples and a red one. Friends, I'm a-telling ye
+plain that the sperrit's a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on my
+hunkers and--"
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't do it here and now!" gasped Dick. "Let's get
+out of this spider's-web while we may."
+
+The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as it
+would seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerous
+neighborhood of the ambushment. When we had pushed on somewhat higher up
+the gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which it
+served as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.
+
+Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in some
+hidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream was
+one of the approaches, 'twas plain that we must climb to some height
+whence we could command a wider view.
+
+We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used by
+the entire company: this though the conclusion left the vanishing trail
+an unsolved riddle. For if the women could have been dragged through
+the low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not--to
+say nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such a
+passage.
+
+So we addressed ourselves to the ascent of the northern mountain; though
+Richard and I would first beg a little space in which to drain the water
+from our boots, and to wring some pounds' weight of it from our clothes.
+That done, we fell in line once more; and being so fortunate as to hit
+upon a ravine which led to the cliff-crowned summit, the climb was shorn
+of half its toil and difficulty. Nevertheless, by the sun's height it
+was well on in the forenoon before we came out, perspiring, like sappers
+in a steam bath, upon the mountain top.
+
+As Yeates had guessed, this northern mountain proved to be a lofty
+table-land. So far as could be seen, the summit was an undulating plain,
+less densely forested than the valley, but with a thick sprinkling of
+pines to make the still, hot air heavy with their resinous fragrance. As
+it chanced, our ravine of ascent headed well back from the cliff edge,
+so we must needs fetch a compass through the pine groves before we could
+win out to any commanding point of view.
+
+The old borderer took his bearings by the sun and laid the course
+quartering to bring us out as near as might be on the heights above the
+gorge. But when we had gone a little way, a thinning of the wood ahead
+warned us that we were approaching some nearer break in the table-land.
+
+Five minutes later we four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking
+abroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you can
+a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war,
+sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general
+level of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension of
+two miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length;
+bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep,
+forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream winding
+through grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end to
+end of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene we
+looked upon.
+
+But what concerned us most was a sight to make us crouch quickly lest
+sharp eyes below should descry us on the sky-line of the cliff. Pitched
+on one of the grassy savannas by the stream, so fairly beneath us that
+the smallest cannon planted on our cliff could have dropped a shot into
+it, was the camp of the powder train.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+HOW UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR
+
+
+'Twas Richard Jennifer who first broke the noontide silence of the
+mountain top, voicing the query which was thrusting sharp at all of us.
+
+"Now how in the name of all the fiends did they make shift to burrow
+from yonder bag-bottom into this?" he would say.
+
+"Ez I allow, that's jest what the good Lord fotched us here for--to find
+out," was Yeates's rejoinder. "Do you and the chief, Cap'n John,
+circumambylate this here pitfall yon way, whilst Cap'n Dick and I go
+t'other way 'round. By time we've made the circuit and j'ined company
+again, I reckon we'll know for sartain whether 'r no they climm' the
+mounting to get in."
+
+So when we had breathed us a little the circuiting was begun, Ephraim
+Yeates and Jennifer going toward the lower end of the sink, and the
+Catawba and I in the opposite direction.
+
+Since we must examine closely every rift and crevice in the boundary
+cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great
+trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony.
+They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell
+you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if
+only he hath ease of his footgear.
+
+Taking it all in all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the
+sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to
+a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was
+level in our faces and the day was waning.
+
+Coming together again, we made haste to compare notes. There was little
+enough to add to the common fund of information, and the mystery of the
+lost trail remained a mystery. True, we, the Indian and I, had found a
+ravine at the extreme upper end of the valley through which, we thought,
+a sure-footed horse might be led at a pinch, up or down; but this ravine
+had not been used by the powder train, and apart from it there was no
+practicable horse path leading down from the plateau.
+
+As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might
+stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity the sunken valley
+was separated from the great gorge without only by a ridge which was no
+more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by
+the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet.
+
+Inasmuch as the most favorable point of espial upon the camp below was
+the cliff whence we had first looked down into the sink, we harked back
+thither, passing around the lower end of the valley and along the
+barrier ridge. Plan we had none as yet, for the preliminary to any
+attempt at a rescue must be some better knowledge of the way into and
+out of Falconnet's cunningly chosen stronghold. True, we might win in
+and out again by the ravine which the chief and I had explored at the
+upper end, and Dick was for trying this when the night should give us
+the curtain of darkness for a shield. But the old hunter would hold this
+forlorn hope in reserve as a last resort.
+
+"Sort it out for yourself, Cap'n Dick," he argued. "Whatsomedever we
+make out to do--four on us ag'inst that there whole enduring army o'
+their'n--has got to be done on the keen jump, with a toler'ble plain
+hoss-road for the skimper-scamper race when it _is_ done. For, looking
+it up and down and side to side, we've got to have hosses--some o' their
+hosses, at that. I jing! if we could jest make out somehow 'r other to
+lay our claws on the beasteses aforehand--"
+
+We had reached the cliff and were once more peering down at the enemy's
+camp. Though for the cliff-shadowed valley it was long past sunset and
+all the depths were blue and purple in the changing half-lights of the
+hour, the shadow veil was but a gauze of color, softening the details
+without obscuring them. So we could mark well the metes and bounds of
+the camp and prick in all the items.
+
+The camp field was the largest of the savannas or natural clearings. On
+the margin of the stream the Indian lodges were pitched in a semicircle
+to face the water. Farther back, Falconnet's troop was hutted in
+rough-and-ready shelters made of pine boughs--these disposed to stand
+between the camp of the Cherokees and the tepee-lodge of the captive
+women which stood among the trees in that edge of the forest hemming the
+slope which buttressed our cliff of observation.
+
+At first we sought in vain for the storing-place of the powder. It was
+the sharp eyes of the Catawba that finally descried it. A rude housing
+of pine boughs, like the huts of the troopers, had been built at the
+base of a great boulder on the opposite bank of the stream; and here was
+the lading of the powder train.
+
+From what could be seen 'twas clear that the camp was no mere bivouac
+for the day; indeed, the Englishmen were still working upon their
+pine-bough shelters, building themselves in as if for a stay indefinite.
+
+"'Tis a rest camp," quoth Dick; "though why they should break the march
+here is more than I can guess."
+
+"No," said Ephraim Yeates. "'Tain't jest rightly a rest camp, ez I take
+it. Ez I was a-saying last night, this here is Tuckasege country, and we
+ain't no furder than a day's running from the Cowee Towns. Now the
+Tuckaseges and the over-mounting Cherokees ain't always on the best o'
+tarms, and I was a wondering if the hoss-captain hadn't sot down here to
+wait whilst he could send a peace-offer' o' powder and lead on to the
+Cowee chiefs to sort o' smooth the way."
+
+"No send him yet; going to send," was Uncanoola's amendment. "Look-see,
+Chelakee braves make haste for load horses down yonder now!"
+
+Again the sharp eyes of the Catawba had come in play. At the foot of the
+great boulder some half dozen of the Cherokees were busy with the powder
+cargo, lashing pack-loads of it upon two horses. One of the group, who
+appeared to be directing the labor of the others, stood apart, holding
+the bridle reins of three other horses caparisoned as for a journey.
+When the loading was accomplished to the satisfaction of the
+horse-holding chieftain, he and two others mounted, took the burdened
+animals in tow, and the small cavalcade filed off down the stream toward
+the apparent _cul de sac_ at the lower end of the valley.
+
+Ephraim Yeates was up in a twinkling, dragging us back from the cliff
+edge.
+
+"Up with ye!" he cried. "Now's our chance to kill two pa'tridges with
+one stone! If we can make out to get down into t'other valley in time to
+see how them varmints come out, we'll know the way in. More'n that, we
+can ambush 'em and so make sartain sure o' five o' the six hosses we're
+a-going to need, come night. But we've got to leg for it like Ahimaaz
+the son of Zadok!"
+
+Thus the old borderer; and being only too eager to come to handgrips
+with the enemy, we were up and running faster than ever Joab's
+messenger ran, long before the old man finished with his Scriptural
+simile.
+
+Not to take the risk of delay on any unexplored short cut, we made
+straight for the ravine of our ascent, found it as by unerring instinct,
+and were presently racing down to the Indian trace in the little upland
+valley above the gorge.
+
+For all the helter-skelter haste I found time to remember that the gorge
+as we had last seen it had been well besprinkled with armed Cherokees
+lying in wait for us. If they were still there we should be like to have
+a hot welcome; and some reminder of this I gasped out to Yeates in mid
+flight.
+
+"Ne'm mind that; if we run up ag'inst 'em anywhere, 'twon't be
+there-away. They've took the hint and quit; scattered out to hunt us
+long ago," was his answer, jerked out between bounds. And after that I
+loosed the Ferara in its sheath and saved my breath as I might for the
+killing business of the moment.
+
+'Twas a sharp disappointment that, for all the haste of our mad scramble
+down the mountain, we were too late to surprise the secret of the
+enemy's stronghold. The Catawba was leading when we dashed down into the
+valley, and one glance sent him flying back to stop us short with a dumb
+show purporting that the quarry was already out of the defile and coming
+up the Indian path.
+
+Richard swore grievously, but the old backwoodsman took the checkmate
+placidly and began to set the pieces for the second game in which the
+horses were the stake, hiding his useless rifle in a hollow tree,--his
+powder had been soaked and spoiled in the early morning plunge for
+life,--and drawing his hunting-knife to feel its edge and point.
+
+"Ez I allow, that fotches us to the hoss-lifting," he said, in his slow
+drawl. Then he laid his commands upon us. "Ord'ly, and in sojer-fashion,
+now; no whooping and yelling. If the hoss-captain's got scouts out
+a-s'arching for us, one good screech from these here varmints we're
+a-going to put out'n their mis'ry 'u'd fix our flints for kingdom come.
+I ain't none afeard o' your nerve,"--this to Richard and me--"leastwise,
+not when it comes to fair and square sojer-fighting. But this here
+onfall has got to be like the smiting o' the 'Malekites--root _and_
+branch; and if ye're tempted to be anywise marciful, jest ricollect that
+for the sake o' them wimmen-folks _we've got to have these hosses_!"
+
+You are not to suppose that he was holding us inactive while he thus
+exhorted us. On the contrary, he was posting us skilfully beside the
+trace like the shrewd old Indian fighter that he was, with a rare and
+practised eye to the maximum of cover with the minimum of thicket tangle
+to impede the rush or to shorten the sword-swing.
+
+But when all was done we were at this disadvantage; that since the enemy
+was close at hand we dared not cross the path to give our trap a jaw on
+either side. To offset this, the Catawba dropped out of line and
+disappeared; and when the Cherokees were no more than a hundred yards
+away, Uncanoola came in sight a like distance in the opposite direction,
+running easily down the path to meet the up-coming riders.
+
+Richard let slip an admiration-oath under his breath. "There's a fine
+bit of strategy for you!" he whispered. "That wily Jack-at-a-pinch of
+ours will befool them into believing that he is a runner from the Cowee
+Towns. 'Tis our cue to lie close; he will halt them just here, and there
+will be roving eyes in the heads of the two who have not to talk."
+
+We had not long to wait. Our cunning ally timed his halting of the
+emissaries to a nicety, and when the three Cherokees drew rein they were
+within easy blade's reach. The powwow, lengthened by Uncanoola till we
+were near bursting with impatience, was spun out wordily, and presently
+we saw the pointing of it. The Catawba was affecting to doubt the
+protests of the emissaries and would have them dismount and prove their
+good faith by smoking the peace-pipe with him.
+
+I give you fair warning, my dears, that you may turn the page here and
+skip what follows if you are fain to be tender-hearted on the score of
+these savage enemies of ours. It was in the very summer solstice of the
+year of violence; a time when he who took the sword was like to perish
+with the sword; and we thought of little save that Margery and her
+handmaiden were in deadliest peril, and that these Indians had five
+horses which we must have.
+
+And as for my own part in the fray, when I recognized in the
+five-feathered chieftain of the three that copper-hued imp of Satan who
+had been the merciless master of ceremonies at the torturing of my poor
+black Tomas, the decent meed of mercy which even a seasoned soldier may
+cherish died within me, and I made sure the steel would find its mark.
+
+So, when Uncanoola drew forth his tobacco pipe and made the three doomed
+ones sit with him in the path to smoke the peace-whiff all around, we
+picked out each his man and smote to slay. The scythe-like sweep of
+Jennifer's mighty claymore left the five-feathered chieftain the shorter
+by a head in the same pulse-beat that the Ferara scanted a second of the
+breath to yell with; though now I recall it, the gurgling death-cry of
+the poor wretch with the steel in his throat was more terrible to hear
+than any war-whoop. As for the old borderer, he was more deliberate.
+Being fair behind and within arm's reach of his man, he seized him by
+the scalp-lock, bent the head backward across his knee--but, faugh!
+these are the merest butcher details, and I would spare you--and myself,
+as well.
+
+While yet this most merciless deed was a-doing, the Catawba bounded to
+his feet and made sure of the horses which were rearing and snorting
+with affright. That done, he must needs gloat, Indian-wise, over his
+fallen adversary, turning the headless body with his foot and gibing at
+it.
+
+"Wah! Call hisself the Great Bear, hey? Heap lie; heap no bear; heap
+nothing, now. Papoose bear no let hisself be trap' that way. No smoke
+peace-pipe--"
+
+But now Ephraim Yeates, standing ear a-cock and motionless, like some
+grim old statue done in leather, cut him short with a sudden, "Hist,
+will ye!" and a twinkling instant later we had other work to do.
+
+"Onto the hosses with this here Injun-meat, ez quick ez the loving
+Lord'll let ye!" was the sharp command. "There's a whole clanjamfrey o'
+the varmints a-coming down the trace, and I reckon ez how we'd better
+scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+WE TAKE THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE
+
+
+Luckily for us the new danger was approaching from the westward. So, by
+dint of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees
+hoist upon the horses, and were able to efface in part the signs of the
+late encounter before the band of riders coming down the Indian path was
+upon us. But there was no time to make an orderly retreat. At most we
+could only withdraw a little way into the wood, halting when we were
+well in cover, and hastily stripping coats and waistcoats to muffle the
+heads of the horses.
+
+So you are to conceive us waiting with nerves upstrung, ready for fight
+or flight as the event should decide, stifling in such pent-up suspense
+as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle.
+Happily, the breath-scanting interval was short. From behind our thicket
+screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely
+footpace down the path. Ephraim Yeates quickly named these new-comers
+for us.
+
+"'Tis about ez I allowed--some o' the Tuckaseges a-scouting down to
+hold a powwow with the hoss-captain. Now, then; if them sharp-nosed
+ponies o' their'n don't happen to sniff the blood--"
+
+The hope was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of
+two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons,
+keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the
+riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged
+the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little
+time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty
+forest was ours to keep or break as we chose.
+
+The old frontiersman was the first to speak.
+
+"Well, friends, I reckon ez how we mought ez well thank the good Lord
+for all His marcies afore we go any furder," he would say; and he doffed
+his cap and did it forthwith.
+
+It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird could wish to look
+upon. The twilight shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering
+in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the
+valley. The hush of nature's mystic hour was abroad, and even the
+swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than
+a stone's cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low
+thunderings. There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and
+the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the
+lightest zephyr hung stark and motionless.
+
+Barring the old borderer, who had gone upon his knees, we stood as we
+were; the Catawba holding the pack horses, and Jennifer and I the three
+that bore the ghastly burdens of mortality. The bodies of the slain had
+been flung across the saddles to balance as they might; and to the
+pommel of that saddle which bore the trunk of the five-feathered
+chieftain, Uncanoola had knotted the grisly head by its scalp-lock to
+dangle and roll about with every restless movement of the horse--a
+hideous death-mask that seemed to mop and mow and stare fearsomely at us
+with its wide-open glassy eyes.
+
+With this background fit for the staging of a scene in Dante Alighieri's
+tragic comedy, the looming mountains, the upper air graying on to dusk,
+and the solemn forest aisles full of lurking shadows, you are to picture
+the old frontiersman, bareheaded and on his knees, pouring forth his
+soul in all the sonorous phrase of Holy Writ, now in thanksgiving, and
+now in most terrible beseechings that all the vials of Heaven's wrath
+might be poured out upon our enemies.
+
+His face, commonly a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now
+ablaze with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of
+supplication he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving,
+asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of
+those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be
+the herald of the wrath of God.
+
+'Twas close upon actual nightfall when the old man rose from his knees
+and, with the rising, put off the beadsman and put on the shrewd old
+Indian fighter. Followed some hurried counselings as to how we should
+proceed, and in these the hunter set the pace for us as his age and vast
+experience in woodcraft gave him leave.
+
+His plan had all the merit of simplicity. Now that we had the horses,
+Richard's notion of an approach from the head of the sunken valley
+became at once the most hopeful of any. So Ephraim Yeates proposed that
+we betake ourselves to the mountain top and to the head of that ravine
+which the Catawba and I had discovered. Here we should leave the horses
+well hidden and secured, make our way down the ravine, and, with the
+stream for a guide, follow the sunken valley to the camp at its lower
+end. Once on the ground without having given the alarm, we might hope to
+free the captives under cover of the darkness; and our retreat up the
+valley would be far less hazardous than any open flight by way of the
+unexplored road the powder train had used.
+
+So said the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this
+_in toto_. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout
+advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet,
+and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he
+proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's plan, leaving
+the fourth to take the hint given by the charred stick and the swimming
+ambush crew, and so penetrating to the valley by the stream cavern, be
+at hand to strike a blow for our dear lady's honor in case of need.
+
+"'Tis a thing to be done, and I am with you, Dick," said I. This before
+Ephraim Yeates could object. "Should there be need for any, two blades
+will be better than one. If it come to blows and we are killed or taken,
+Yeates and the chief must make the shift to do without our help."
+
+As you would guess, the old hunter demurred to this halving of our
+slender force, but we over-persuaded him. If all went well, we were to
+rendezvous on the scene of action to carry out the plan of rescue. But
+if our adventure should prove disastrous, Yeates and Uncanoola were to
+bide their time, striking in when and how they might.
+
+Touching this contingency, I drew the old man aside for a word in
+private.
+
+"If aught befall us, Ephraim,--if we should be nabbed as we are like to
+be,--you are not to let any hope of helping us lessen by a feather's
+weight the rescue chance of the women. You'll promise me this?"
+
+"Sartain sure; ye can rest easy on that, Cap'n John. But don't ye go for
+to let that rampaging boy of our'n upsot the fat in the fire with any o'
+his foolishness. He's love-sick, he is; and there ain't nothing in this
+world so ridic'lous foolish ez a love-sick boy--less'n 'tis a love-sick
+gal."
+
+I promised on my part and so we went our separate ways in the gathering
+darkness; though not until the lashings of the packs had been cut and
+the powder and lead, save such spoil of both as Ephraim Yeates and
+Uncanoola would reserve, had been spilled into the river. As for the
+bodies of the dead Indians, the old hunter said he would let them ride
+till he should come to some convenient chasm for a sepulcher; but I
+mistrusted that he and the Catawba would scalp and leave them once we
+were safely out of sight.
+
+At the parting we took the river's edge for it, Richard and I, keeping
+well under the bank and working our way cautiously down the gorge until
+we were stopped by the pouring cross-torrent of the underground
+tributary. Here we turned short to the left along the margin of the
+barrier stream, and tracing its course across the gorge came presently
+to the northern cliff at the lip of the spewing cavern mouth.
+
+By now the night was fully come and in the wooded defile we could place
+ourselves only by the sense of touch.
+
+"Are you ready, Dick?" said I.
+
+"As ready as a man with a shaking ague can be," he gritted out. "This
+dog's work we have been doing of late has brought my old curse upon me
+and I am like to rattle my teeth loose."
+
+"Let me go alone then. Another cold plunge may be the death of you."
+
+"No," said he, stubbornly. "Wait but a minute and the fever will be on
+me; then I shall be fighting-fit for anything that comes."
+
+So we waited, and I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets.
+Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I
+had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a
+plunge into cold water would make him shrink.
+
+In a little time he felt for my hand and grasped it.
+
+"I'm warm enough now, in all conscience," he said; and with that we
+slipped into the stream.
+
+'Twas a disappointment of the grateful sort to find the water no more
+than mid-thigh deep. The current was swift and strong, but with the
+pebbly bottom to give good footing 'twas possible to stem it slowly.
+Laying hold of each other for the better breasting of the flood we felt
+our way warily to the middle of the pool; felt for the low-sprung cavern
+arch, and for that scanty lifting of it where we hoped to find head room
+between stone above and stream below.
+
+We found the highest part of the arch after some blind groping, and
+making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like
+progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.
+
+I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less,
+no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.
+All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed
+caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the
+room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as
+it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right
+glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me;
+glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.
+
+Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of the rock dragon was
+vastly more terrifying than difficult. Once well within the closely
+drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a
+purchase for the foothold. Better still, when we had passed a
+pike's-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew
+wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to
+lock arms and push on side by side.
+
+From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and
+presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any
+peaceful woodland brook. Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the
+cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking
+straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from
+a narrow breadth of sky.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL
+
+
+Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts
+of the grateful outer air.
+
+"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe in
+his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the
+answer with our finger-tips.
+
+When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most
+simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the
+stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was
+quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In
+some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face
+had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep
+cleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm--that toward the
+upland valley--was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides;
+but the lower end was open.
+
+Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come,
+turning from the Indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier
+stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single
+file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so
+to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.
+
+How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well,
+had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had
+left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we
+might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we
+felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's
+edge in the gorge.
+
+That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into
+the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were
+presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This
+extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide
+and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing
+pebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks
+and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like
+to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side
+passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.
+
+"Softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"
+
+Just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone
+to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew
+his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the
+great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the
+teeth-chattering suffered him:
+
+"What say you, Jack? Shall we rush them? There's naught else for it."
+And then, with a gritting oath: "Oh, damn this cursed chilling!"
+
+I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath
+to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved
+our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the
+crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly
+starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of
+savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two
+sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
+
+As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the
+same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in
+which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless
+of possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the main
+corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped
+past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky
+trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
+
+"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so
+suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak
+without coughing to betray ourselves.
+
+"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "By
+all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his
+peace-offering out yonder on the trace--which same they did not. So
+when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch
+hot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhounds
+win out in time to overtake them!"
+
+"Aye," said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to
+go about our business with the sentries.
+
+But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem
+that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. The
+watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the
+watchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue and
+cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the
+pit-black depths beyond.
+
+Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the
+rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a
+long Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow
+whence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in the
+sunken valley.
+
+"Now God be praised!" quoth Richard most fervently. "Another hour in
+this cursed kennel with the fever on me and I should be a yammering
+loose-wit." And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to
+be at large beneath them.
+
+Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the
+stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the
+enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met no
+let or hindrance in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, the
+Indians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother's
+son of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire built
+before the pine-bough shelters.
+
+Favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-hand
+reconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. As I have
+said, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered the
+steep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed from
+the stream, and from the Indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at the
+water's edge. Here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of the
+Indian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humming
+like the buzzing of a bee-hive. The flap of the tepee-lodge was closely
+drawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap of
+white-ashed embers.
+
+"They are safe as yet, thank God!" says Richard, heaving a most palpable
+sigh of relief. Then, with the fever in his veins to whip his natural
+ardor into hasty action: "'Twill be hours before Eph and the Catawba can
+come in by your upper ravine, Jack, and we shall never have a better
+chance than this. Hold you quiet here, whilst I--"
+
+But I laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardy
+marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan.
+
+"Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?" I would say. "'Twill be risky
+enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that
+great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to
+work in!"
+
+He turned upon me like a pettish child. "Oh, to the devil with your
+stumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. By
+heaven! I'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in your veins!"
+
+"So you have said before. But let that pass, we must bide by our promise
+to Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in present
+peril. Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we
+have the firelight to help. When the time for action comes we must be
+able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be. Come."
+
+'Twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length
+and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp. We had it;
+had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his
+lieutenant and another. The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.
+The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and
+while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less to
+fear from him.
+
+I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of
+usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.
+
+"I know Frank Falconnet better than you do, Jack, for I have known him
+later. He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate
+with the liquor in him. 'Tis lucky we are here. If he do but drink deep
+enough, Margery is like to have need--"
+
+"Hist!" said I; "some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as
+they look."
+
+He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us
+out on the up-valley side of the encampment. Here we could look down
+into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of
+the band were cropping the lush grass. It was the sight of these, and of
+Margery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering
+venture to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but now
+dissuaded Richard Jennifer.
+
+"We shall need another mount, and Mistress Margery's saddle," I said.
+"Lie you close here whilst I play the horse-thief on these reavers."
+
+But my dear lad was rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he
+retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come
+through alive."
+
+"Mayhap," I admitted. "But yet--"
+
+He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an
+extinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire
+had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.
+
+I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man
+had walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.
+
+"Give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shorten
+upon," and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of
+hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by
+the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.
+
+"Follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!" he commanded; and so,
+pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a
+shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer
+shadows of the forest.
+
+When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by
+the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings
+with the Ferara.
+
+"Say, quick! what to do with him, Jack?" he demanded, when I came up;
+and now my slower wit came into play.
+
+"Out of this to some safer dressing-room, and I'll show you," said I;
+and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or
+more.
+
+When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his
+life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan I
+had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in
+train before this trooper should be missed.
+
+So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we
+stripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and
+became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that
+king whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,
+waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the
+boots we stuck fast, and I was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.
+
+The change made,--and you may believe no play-house actor of them all
+ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,--we bound our luckless captive
+hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him
+with only his boots for a memento,--happily for him the night was no
+more than goose-flesh cool,--we raced back to our peeping-place on the
+skirting of the camp ground.
+
+Here Dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable for
+letting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and with
+that I stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy's
+camp.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN WHICH I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE
+
+
+Having so good a disguise, the thing I had set myself to do would seem
+to ask for little more than peaceful boldness held in check by common
+caution.
+
+The point where I had broken cover to step into the circle of fire light
+was nearly equidistant from the Englishmen's camp on the right and the
+horse meadow on the left, so I had not to pass within recognition range
+of the great fire; indeed, I might have skulked in the laurel cover all
+the way, thus coming to the horses unseen by any, but that I was afraid
+Falconnet might miss his trooper. So I thought it best to show myself
+discreetly.
+
+Copying our captive's lounging stride, I first held a sauntering course
+down to the stream's edge, keeping the great camp-fire and the droning
+Indian hive well to the right and far enough aloof to baffle any
+over-curious eye at either. Coming to the stream without mishap, I
+stopped and made a feint of drinking; after which I crossed and climbed
+slowly toward the makeshift powder magazine.
+
+As I have said, the camp was pitched in a small savanna or natural
+clearing on the right bank of the little river. This clearing was
+hedged about by the forest on three sides, and backed by the densely
+wooded steeps and crags of the western cliff. I guessed the compass of
+it to be something more than an acre; not greatly more, since the fire
+at the troop camp lighted all its boundaries.
+
+On the left or opposite bank of the stream there was no intervale at
+all. The ground rose sharply from the water's edge in a rough hillside
+thickly studded and bestrewn with boulders great and small; fallen
+cleavings and hewings from the crags of the eastern cliff. 'Twas at the
+foot of one of the boulders, a huge overhanging mass of weather-riven
+rock facing the camp, that the powder cargo was sheltered; so isolated
+to be out of danger from the camp-fires.
+
+From the hillside just below this powder rock I could look back upon the
+camp _en enfilade_, as an artilleryman would say. Nearest at hand was
+the half-moon of Indian lodges with the hollow of the crescent facing
+the stream, and a caldron fire burning in the midst. Around the fire a
+ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling
+dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer
+ring of squatting figures--the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.
+
+Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the
+savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in
+the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.
+
+On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was
+in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion
+came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.
+
+"Ho, Jack Warden!" he called, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands to
+lift the hail above the chanting of the Indian dancers. "Have a look at
+that shelter whilst you are over there and make sure 'twill shed rain if
+the weather shifts."
+
+Now some such long-range marking down as this was what I had been
+angling for. So I came to attention and saluted in soldierly fashion,
+thereby raising a great laugh among my pseudo-comrades around the
+trooper fire--a laugh that pointed shrewdly to the baronet-captain's
+lack of proper discipline. But that is neither here nor there. Having my
+master's order for it, I climbed to the foot of the powder rock.
+
+Here the bare sight of all the stored-up devastation set me athirst with
+a fierce longing for leave to snap a pistol in the well-laid mine. For
+if these enemies of ours had planned their own undoing they could never
+have given a desperate foeman a better chance. To hold the pine boughs
+of the rude shelter in place they had piled a great loose wall of stones
+around and over the cargo; and the firing of the powder, heaped as it
+was against the backing cliff of the boulder, would hurl these weighting
+stones in a murderous broadside upon the camp across the stream.
+
+But since my dear lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside,
+I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as
+I thirsted to--could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap
+nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not
+have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only
+obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing
+spark out of two bits of stone.
+
+But being otherwise enjoined, as I say, I turned my back upon the
+temptation and held to the business in hand, which was to reach and
+recross the stream higher up and so to come among the horses.
+
+As I had hoped to find them, the saddles were hung upon the branches of
+the nearest trees, Margery's horse-furnishings among them. At first the
+black mare was shy of me, but a gentling word or two won her over, and
+she let me take her by the forelock and lead her deeper into the herd
+where I could saddle and bridle her in greater safety.
+
+My plan to cut her out was simple enough. Trusting to the darkness--the
+horse meadow was far enough from the fires to make a murky twilight of
+the ruddy glow--I thought to lead the mare quietly away up the stream
+and thus on to the foot of that ravine by which we hoped to climb to the
+old borderer's rendezvous on the plateau. But when all was ready and I
+sought to set this plan in action, an unforeseen obstacle barred the
+way. To keep the horses from straying up the valley an Indian sentry
+line was strung above the grazing meadow, and into this I blundered like
+any unlicked knave of a raw recruit.
+
+Had I been armed, the warrior who rose before me phantom-like in the
+laurel edging of the meadow would have had a most sharp-pointed answer
+to his challenge. As it was,--I had left my sword with Jennifer because
+the captured trooper whose understudy I was had left his sword in
+camp,--I tried to parley with the sentry. He knew no word of English,
+nor I of Cherokee; but that deadlock was speedily broken. A guttural
+call summoned others of the horse-keepers, and among them one who spoke
+a little English.
+
+"Ugh! What for take white squaw horse?" he demanded.
+
+"'Tis the captain's order," I replied, lying boldly to fit the crisis.
+
+At that they gave me room; and had I hastened, I had doubtless gone at
+large without more ado. But at this very apex point of hazard I must
+needs play out the part of unalarm to the fool's _envoi_, taking time to
+part the mare's forelock under the head-stall, and looking leisurely to
+the lacings of the saddle-girth.
+
+This foolhardy delay cost me all, and more than all. I was still
+fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my
+Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of
+laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing
+laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me.
+Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white
+of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running
+swiftly for cover to the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an
+escaped Bedlamite as he fled. It asked for no second glance, this
+apparition of the yelling madman; 'twas our captive soldier, foot-loose
+and racing in to raise the hue and cry.
+
+Now you may always count upon this failing in a cautious man, that at a
+crisis he is like to do the unwisest thing that offers. This cutting out
+of Margery's mare was none so vital a matter that I should have risked
+the marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan upon it. Yet having done this very
+thing, I must needs make a bad matter infinitely worse.
+
+Instead of mounting to ride a charge through the camp, and so to draw
+the pursuit after me toward the cavern entrance, as I should, I slapped
+the mare to send her bounding through the guard line, snatched a saddle
+from its oak-branch peg to hurl it in the faces of the sentry group, and
+darting aside, plunged into the laurel thicket to come by running where
+I could and creeping where I must to that place where I had left Richard
+Jennifer.
+
+All hot and exasperated as I was, 'twas something less than cooling to
+find Dick a-double on the ground, holding his sides and laughing like a
+yokel at his first pantomime.
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! did you--did you twig him, Jack?" he gasped. "Saw you ever
+such a mincing puss-in-boots since the Lord made you? Ah! ha! ha!"
+
+"The devil take your ill-timed humor!" I cried. "Up with you, man, and
+let us vanish while we may!"
+
+By this the camp was in a pretty ferment, as you would guess--our late
+captive having had space enough to tell his tale. Drunk or sober,
+Falconnet was afoot and alert, shouting his orders to the Englishmen who
+were scrambling for their arms, and to the Indians who came swarming up
+from the lodges.
+
+Whilst we looked, the Cherokees scattered like a company of trained
+gillies to beat us out of cover; and when the hunt was fairly up, the
+baronet-captain set his men in marching order to surround the wigwam of
+the captives.
+
+As yet there was time for a swift retreat up the valley, or at least for
+the choosing of some battle-field of our own where the enemy need not
+outnumber us twenty to one; and again I urged Richard to bestir himself.
+But it was the sight of Falconnet's troopers deploying to surround the
+tepee-lodge, and not any word of mine, that broke his merriment in the
+midst.
+
+At a bound he was up and handing me my sword.
+
+"Good by, Jack; go you whilst you can. You'll be like to meet Eph and
+the Catawba coming in; turn them back and tell them to bide their time."
+
+"But you?" I would say.
+
+"My place is inside of that soldier-cordon our friend is drawing about
+his dove-cote. I shall be at hand when she needs me, as I promised."
+
+"Aye, so you may be; but not alone," said I; and with that we fell to
+running like a pair of doubling foxes through the wood on the steep
+slope behind the lodge, striving with might and main to gain the laurel
+thicket whence we had made our first reconnaissance before the
+converging lines of the redcoat cordon should close and shut us out.
+
+We did it by the skin of our teeth, diving to cover through the closing
+gap not a second too soon. When we were in and hugging the bare ground
+under the scanty leafing of the laurel, I take no shame in saying that I
+would have given a king's ransom to be at large again. Had there been
+but one of us the covert would have been cramped enough; and I was
+painfully conscious that my borrowed coat of scarlet was but a poor
+thing to hide in.
+
+To make it worse, Falconnet, who had lagged behind at the fire, was now
+heaping fresh fuel on, and this reviving of the blaze made the place as
+light as day. With the nearest links in the redcoat chain no more than a
+pike's-length at our backs, we dared not stir or breathe a word; and,
+all in all, we might have been taken like rats in a trap had any one of
+the sentries on our side of the circle chanced to look behind him.
+
+Having repaired the fire to his liking, the troop-captain came up to
+pass a word or two with his lieutenant. They spoke guardedly, but we
+could hear--could not help hearing.
+
+"You have seen nothing, Gordon?"
+
+"Nothing, as yet."
+
+"Make the round again and tell the men 'twill be ten gold joes and a
+double allowance of liquor to the man who first claps eyes on any one of
+the four."
+
+The subaltern went to carry out the order, and Falconnet fell to pacing
+back and forth before the little wigwam. I could see his face at the
+turn where the firelight fell upon him; 'twas the face of a villain at
+his worst, namely, a villain half in liquor. There was a lurking devil
+of passion peering out of the sensuous eyes; and ever and anon he
+stopped as if to listen for some sound within the captives' lodge.
+
+When the lieutenant returned to make his report, he was given another
+order to cap the first.
+
+"Your line is too close-drawn and too conspicuous," said the captain,
+shortly. "Move the men out fifty paces in advance, and bid them take
+cover."
+
+"They will scarce be within hail of each other at that," says the
+lieutenant.
+
+"Near enough, with ten gold pieces to sharpen their eyesight. Go you
+with them and hold them to their work."
+
+The line was presently extended as the order ran, each link in the
+cordon chain advancing fifty paces on its front into the forest. Dick
+fetched a deep sigh of relief; and I thought less of the thin-leafed
+cover and the scarlet coat of me.
+
+Falconnet had resumed the pacing of his sentry beat before the lodge,
+but when his men were out of sight and hearing he stopped short and
+stole on tiptoe to lay his ear to the flap.
+
+"So, you are awake, Mistress Margery? Send your woman out. I would speak
+with you--alone."
+
+There was no reply, but we could both hear the low anguished voice of
+our dear lady praying for help in this her hour of trial. Dick inched
+aside to give me room, freeing his weapon, as I did mine. We were not
+over-quiet about it, but the captain of horse was too hot upon his own
+devil's business to look behind him.
+
+Having no answer from within, he stooped to loose the flap. It was
+pegged down on the inside. He rose and whipped out his sword; the
+firelight fell upon his face again and we saw it as it had been the face
+of a foul fiend from the pit.
+
+"Open!" he commanded; and when there was neither reply nor obedience, he
+cut the flap free with his sword and flung it back.
+
+The two women within the wigwam were on their knees before a little
+crucifix hanging on the lodge wall. So much we saw as we broke cover and
+ran in upon the despoiler. Then the battle-madness came upon us and I,
+for one, saw naught but the tense-drawn face of a swordsman fighting for
+his life--a face in which the hot flush of evil passion had given place
+to the ashen graying of fear.
+
+We drove at him together, Dick and I, and so must needs fall afoul of
+each other clumsily, giving him time to spring back and so to miss the
+claymore stroke which else would have shorn him to the middle. Then
+ensued as pretty a bit of blade work as any master of the old
+cut-and-thrust school could wish to see; and through it all this king's
+captain of horse seemed to bear a charmed life.
+
+There was no punctilio of the code of honor in this duel _à outrance_.
+Knowing our time was short, we fought as men who fight with halters
+round their necks; not to decide a nice point at issue, but to kill this
+accursed villain as we would kill a mad dog or a venomous reptile whose
+living on imperiled the life and honor of the woman we loved.
+
+Thrice, whilst I held him in play, Dick rushed in to end it with a
+scythe-sweep of the broadsword; and thrice the Scottish death was turned
+aside by the flashing circle of steel wherewith the man striving
+shrewdly to gain time made shift to shield himself.
+
+Yet it was not in flesh and blood to fend the double onslaught for more
+than some brief minute or two. Play as he would--and no
+_schlägermeister_, of my old field-marshal's picked troop could best him
+at this game of parry and defense--he must give ground step by step;
+slowly at the pressing of the Ferara, and in quick backward leaps when
+the great broadsword bit at him.
+
+For the first few bouts he withstood us in grim silence. But now Richard
+cut in again and the claymore stroke, less skilfully turned aside,
+brought him to his knees. This broke his bull courage somewhat, and
+though he was afoot and on guard before my point could reach him, he
+began to bellow lustily for help.
+
+As you would suppose, the call was all unneeded. At the first clash of
+steel the outlying troopers were up and swarming to the rescue; and now
+on all sides came the trampling rush of the in-closing cordon line.
+
+Had Falconnet held his ground a moment longer he would have had us fast
+in the jaws of the trooper-trap; but 'tis the fatal flaw in mere brute
+courage that it will break at the pinch. No sooner did the volunteer
+captain catch a glimpse of his up-coming reinforcements than he must
+needs show us a clean pair of heels, running like a craven coward and
+shouting madly to his men to close with us and cut us down.
+
+"After him!" roared Dick, who was by now as rage-mad as any berserker;
+and with a cut and thrust to right and left for the nipping trap-jaws we
+were out and away in chase.
+
+Now you may mark this as you will; that whilst the devil hath need of
+his bond-servant he will come between with a miracle if need be to keep
+the villain breath of life in his vassal. Three bounds beyond the
+closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp
+field; and here the devil's miracle was wrought. Out of the forest
+fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it
+seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees--the detachment we had met in
+the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the
+pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.
+
+"Back to back, lad!" I shouted; and 'twas thus we met their onslaught.
+
+In such a fray as that which followed 'tis the trivial things that leave
+their mark upon the memory. For one, I recall the curious thrill of
+master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer's great shoulder
+muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore. For
+another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my
+second--or mayhap 'twas the third--gushed out upon my sword hand, and I
+remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the
+pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and
+try in the death throe to withdraw it.
+
+But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free
+the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space
+they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so
+thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I
+was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER
+
+
+Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more
+than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping
+recovery. But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open
+savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through
+the midst.
+
+To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart
+a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of
+the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry
+branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges
+of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other
+savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.
+
+So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was
+not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage
+fashion. But Richard Jennifer--what had become of him? A sound, half
+sigh, half groan, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I
+was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my
+poor lad.
+
+"Dick!" I cried.
+
+He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a
+smile as loving-tender as a woman's.
+
+"Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
+you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."
+
+"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.
+
+"In the same onset. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that
+back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot," this with an inching
+nod toward a row of naked bodies propped sitting against a fallen tree;
+nine of them in all, one with its severed head between its knees, and
+three others showing the gaping hacks and hewings of the great
+broadsword.
+
+"They've fetched them here to see us burn," he went on. "But by the
+gods, we have the warrant of two good blades and Ephraim Yeates's
+hunting-knife that the only fires they'll ever see are those of hell."
+
+"Yeates?" I queried. "Then they have taken him and the Catawba, as
+well?"
+
+"Not alive, you may be sure, else we should have them for company. But
+it has a black look for our friends that the flying column we met in the
+stream-cave came back so soon. Moreover, the bodies of the three
+peace-pipe smokers were found and brought in; that will be the Great
+Bear holding his head in his hands at the end of yonder bloody
+masquerade."
+
+"I guessed as much. God rest our poor comrades!"
+
+"Aye; and God help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we
+have signed her death warrant with our bunglings."
+
+"If it were only death!" I groaned.
+
+"'Tis just that, Jack," said he; "no better, mayhap, but no worse. When
+we were downed by that screeching mob, she was out and on her knees to
+Falconnet, beseeching him to spare us. He put her off smoothly at first,
+saying 'twas the Indians' affair--that they would not be balked of their
+vengeance by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more
+piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as
+swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour
+she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English
+gentleman."
+
+"Well?" said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.
+
+"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she
+had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have
+spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said.
+'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'"
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble of
+redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the
+block."
+
+"She will do it, think you?" I queried, fearful lest she would, but more
+fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.
+
+"Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr blood in her
+on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And God
+nerve her to it, say I."
+
+I said "Amen" to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as
+condemned men on the gallows the busy preparations for our taking off.
+
+Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me
+most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against
+the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures
+of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now,
+some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their
+bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.
+
+I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me
+fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista to
+where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly
+upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering
+the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me
+irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review
+again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the
+circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom
+Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.
+
+While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were
+strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle
+to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have
+put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.
+
+"'Tis the death song for the slain," said Richard; and while it lasted,
+this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping
+dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us
+spellbound.
+
+But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers. In its
+dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the
+dancers turned as one man to face us.
+
+I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a
+horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of
+blood bent upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone
+before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet,
+as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.
+
+The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound
+us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst
+the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.
+
+"'Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us
+freedom to shrink and dodge. Look straight before you and never flinch a
+hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!"
+
+"Trust me," said I. "We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to
+give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name
+us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough."
+
+The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.
+He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at
+me.
+
+That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the
+others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I
+would think, to split my skull. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh
+masterful enough to override the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to
+hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by
+a hair's-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.
+
+"Bravo! well met!" cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: "Here
+comes mine."
+
+As he spoke, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull
+crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark--I could
+not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting laugh gave me
+leave to breathe again.
+
+The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood
+out quickly one after another and for a little space the air was full of
+hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous skill
+of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the
+victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the
+thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales
+with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians
+of ours threw well and skilfully; 'tis a part of the only trade they
+know--the trade of war--to send a weapon true to the mark. None the
+less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the
+cloth of sleeve or body covering--and the flesh beneath it, as well.
+
+Dick had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running
+fire of taunts and gibing flings at the marksmen, I could hear the
+gritting oaths aside when they pinked him.
+
+Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet,
+sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the
+helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs of
+death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll on fortitude than
+did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing erect. 'Tis no
+figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a
+kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the
+agony of it.
+
+Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the
+crueler refinements of these ante-burning torments; the flaying alive by
+inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the
+flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught of this;
+and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn
+us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the
+wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or
+four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.
+
+'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage
+as these barbarians go, thrust a bit of paper into my hand, and gave me
+time to glance its message out by the light of the fire. 'Twas a line
+from Margery; and this is what she said:
+
+     _Dear Heart:
+
+     Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your good
+     friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone, my lion-hearted
+     one. I am praying the good God to give you dying grace, and me
+     the courage to follow you quickly. Margery.
+
+     This by the hand of Tallachama._
+
+For one brief instant a wave of joy caught and flung me upon its highest
+crest, and all these savage tormentors could do to me became as naught.
+Then the true meaning of this her brave _Ave atque vale_ smote me like a
+space-flung meteor, and the joy-wave became an ocean of despair to
+engulf me in its blackest depths. The letter was never meant for me;
+'twas for Richard Jennifer, who, as she would think, must know the
+story of her marriage to his friend and must believe her love went with
+the giving of her hand. And she named him Lion-Heart because he was
+brave, and true, and strong, like that first English Richard of the
+kingly line.
+
+I thrust the message back upon the bearer of it, begging him in dumb
+show to give it quickly to my companion. I knew not at the time if he
+did it, being so crushed and blinded by this fresh misery. But when the
+Indians drew off to ring us in a chanting circle for the final act, I
+would not let the lad see my face for fear he might fathom the
+heart-break in me and know the cause of it.
+
+'Twas at this crisis, when all was ready and one had run to fetch the
+fire, that I heard a smothered oath from Dick and saw the Indian who was
+coming up to fire the wood heaps drop his brand and tread upon it.
+
+"Ecod!" said a voice, courtier-like and smoothly modulated. "'Tis most
+devilish lucky I came, Captain Ireton. Another moment and they would
+have grilled you in the king's uniform--a rank treason, to say naught of
+poor Jack Warden left without a clout to cover him."
+
+It needed not the glance aside to name mine enemy. But I would not
+pleasure him with an answer. Neither would Richard Jennifer. He stood
+silent for a little space, smiling and nursing his chin in one hand, as
+his habit was. Then he spoke again.
+
+"I came to bid you God-speed, gentlemen. You tumbled bravely into my
+little trap. I made no doubt you'd follow where the lady led, and so you
+did. But you'll turn back from this, I do assure you, if there be any
+virtue in an Indian barbecue."
+
+At this Richard could hold in no longer.
+
+"Curse you!" he gritted. "Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair
+to draw us out of hiding?"
+
+"Truly," said this arch-fiend, smiling again. "Most unluckily for you,
+you both stood in my way,--you see I am speaking of it now as a thing
+past,--and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one
+stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in."
+
+"Have done!" choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. "Give
+place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!"
+
+"At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked
+meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a
+marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that
+call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while
+ago." And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away,
+forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's
+uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.
+
+The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among
+the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the
+fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.
+
+"Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from
+my poor Dick.
+
+His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but
+upon his malady, the tertian fever.
+
+"Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these
+cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and
+that will break my heart!"
+
+Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it
+looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the
+chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and
+thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me
+gasp and strangle at the finish.
+
+For a little time after the sucking in of that first
+smoke-breath--nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to
+die by fire--I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by
+anticipation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a
+sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely
+troubled.
+
+So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their
+weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and
+yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily
+to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and
+felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through
+the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as
+marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures
+stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.
+
+'Twas Dick's voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that
+broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in
+panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.
+
+"One word, Jack, before we go--go to our own place. He said--he said she
+would be free to--to marry him. Tell me ... O God in Heaven!"
+
+His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of
+flame, yet I must needs add to it.
+
+"Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear
+me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you'll
+forgive--"
+
+Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and
+through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with
+green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon
+by smothering us out of hand.
+
+With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full
+to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I
+called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and
+his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful
+grimaces of the death throe.
+
+You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away
+for very pity's sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames,
+as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.
+
+There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The
+fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of
+flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that
+lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on
+shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the
+dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering
+triumph.
+
+Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now
+above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames
+a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze
+swept through the tree-tops.
+
+So now I would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He
+gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to
+drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind;
+a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring
+flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the
+dulled senses once more keenly alert.
+
+With the wind came the rain, a passing summer-night's shower of great
+drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing
+in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous
+droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it,
+came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the
+savanna--this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain's whistle
+shrilling the assembly.
+
+While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel
+and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full
+cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of
+the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form
+burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand
+plucked me out of the scorching hell-pit.
+
+If I did aught to help it was all mechanical. I do remember dimly some
+fierce struggle to free my legs from the blazing tangle; this, and the
+swelling sob of joy at the sight of the faithful Catawba hacking at
+Dick's lashings and dragging him also free of the fire. And you may
+believe the welcome tears came to ease the pain of my seared eyes when
+my poor lad--I had thought him gone past human help--took two staggering
+steps and flung his arms about my neck.
+
+Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In
+a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind
+the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants
+so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them
+lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of
+us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow
+flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock
+like that of an earthquake.
+
+The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most
+awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great
+powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff
+itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba
+sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm
+for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.
+
+But Dick hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the
+crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed
+ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself
+down, crying as if his heart would break.
+
+"O God! she's lost, she's lost!--and I have missed the chance to die
+with her or for her!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES
+
+
+However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer's
+grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it,
+loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon Dick with pullings and
+haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very
+stiffening rigor of despair.
+
+So, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in
+midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling
+fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian
+there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard's
+afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be
+denied.
+
+"Go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "I must go back.
+Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright.
+'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say."
+
+The Catawba grunted his disgust.
+
+"Captain Jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. What think? White squaw
+_yonder_--no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the
+direction of the stricken camp.
+
+Richard spun around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. "Then she
+is alive and safe?" he burst out. "Speak, friend, whilst I leave the
+breath in you to do it!"
+
+"Ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer's vehemence or
+by the dog-like shake. "What for Captain Jennif' think papoose thinks
+'bout the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw _firs'_; _then_
+blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif' and Captain
+Long-knife if can. Heap do firs' thing _firs'_, and las' thing _las'_.
+Wah!"
+
+It was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to
+make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us
+forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor
+lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for Dick;
+and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.
+
+So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in
+arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets
+spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage.
+And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, Dick
+was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a
+dead weight between us.
+
+'Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that
+rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the
+fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle
+preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking
+it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful
+Catawba.
+
+None the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and
+were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and
+we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their
+wire-like needles under foot.
+
+By this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but
+it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a
+nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very
+ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "Well, now; the Lord be
+praised! if here ain't the whole enduring--"
+
+What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For
+now my poor Dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I
+were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick
+little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady
+darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.
+
+"Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel,
+cruel!" Then she lashed out at us. "Why don't you strike a light? How
+can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"
+
+"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; "'tis only that the fever has
+overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the
+fire-scorching."
+
+"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."
+
+We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim
+found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel
+of a great king's musket--one of his reavings from the enemy--soon had a
+pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while
+she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples
+gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double
+rescue from the old hunter.
+
+Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me
+figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the
+Indian camp at our torture spectacle.
+
+Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come
+within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless
+back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when
+every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they
+set to work.
+
+With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams
+of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream;
+the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern
+edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the
+light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.
+
+The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected
+whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the
+looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it
+asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of
+the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a
+shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late
+jailers to the shelter of the wood.
+
+Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of
+temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the
+stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When
+he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran
+back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal
+from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.
+
+The outworking of the _coup de main_ was a triumph for the old
+borderer's shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the
+Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by
+the firing and the shrilling of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly
+into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder
+train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of Dick and me.
+
+Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had
+his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for,
+after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in
+rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had
+these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been
+lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the
+grass in a little glade; and with this mount for Margery and her
+tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.
+
+All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and
+oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that
+whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking
+note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them
+down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'Twas
+altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden
+that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how I
+did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.
+
+It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back
+upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates
+the pressing question of the moment.
+
+"As I take it, we may not linger here," I said. "Have you marked out a
+line of retreat?"
+
+The old borderer was busied with his loot of the Indian camp--'twas not
+in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been
+for time. In the raffle of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and
+warrior finery, he came upon my good old blade and Richard's great
+claymore--trophies claimed by the head men of the Cherokees after our
+taking, as we made no doubt.
+
+"Found 'em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the Great Bear,"
+said the hunter, and then with grim humor: "'Lowed to keep 'em to
+ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up
+in a fiery chariot, like the good old Elijah." The weapons disposed of,
+he made answer to my query. "Ez for making tracks immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner, I allow there ain't no two notions about that. But I'm
+dad-daddled if I know which-a-way to put out, Cap'n John, and that's the
+gospil fact."
+
+"Why not strike for the Great Trace, and so go back the way the powder
+convoy came?" I asked.
+
+It could be done, he said, but the hazard was great. 'Twas out of all
+reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to
+carry the news of the earthquake massacre. That news once cried abroad
+in the near-by Cowee Towns, the entire Tuckasege nation would turn out
+to run us down. Moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only
+practicable horse-path leading eastward.
+
+"Ez I'm telling you right now, Cap'n John, we made one more blunder in
+this here onfall of our'n, owin' to our having ne'er a seventh son of a
+seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead. Where we flashed in
+the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and Cap'n
+Dick got in. Ever' last one of 'em able to crawl is a-making straight
+for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do
+'em like the Gileadites did the men o' Ephraim at the passages o' the
+Jordan."
+
+Fresh as I was from the torture fire, I could not forbear a shudder at
+this old man's savagery.
+
+"Kill them in cold blood?" I would say.
+
+"Anan?" he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and I let the
+matter rest. He was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is
+concerned.
+
+But when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to
+the eastward flitting by way of the Great Trace. To the west and south
+there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white
+settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the Watauga. I
+asked if we might hope to reach this.
+
+"'Tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e'enabout the
+mountainousest patch o' land that ever laid out o' doors," was the
+hunter's reply. "And there ain't ne'er a deer-track, ez I knows on, to
+p'int the way."
+
+"Then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the
+Tuckaseges," said I.
+
+"Ez I reckon, that's about the long and short of it. And I do
+everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride
+skimper-scamper again, when she's been fair living a-horseback for a
+fortnight."
+
+"She will not fail you," I ventured to say, adding: "But Jennifer is in
+poor fettle for making speed."
+
+"It's ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he'll ride," quoth the old
+hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. "Reckon we can get him
+on a hoss right now."
+
+I went to see. Margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light I
+could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper
+distance.
+
+"Your patient, Mistress Margery,--We must mount and ride at once. Is he
+fit?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But we must be far to the eastward before daybreak."
+
+"I can not help it. If you make him ride to-night you will finish what
+those cruel savages began, Captain Ireton."
+
+"We have little choice--none, I should say."
+
+"Oh, you are bitter hard!" she cried, though wherein my offending lay
+just then I was wholly at a loss to know.
+
+"'Tis your privilege to say so," I rejoined. "But as for making Dick
+ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. We are only a little way
+from the nearest Indian towns, and if the daylight find us here--"
+
+"Spare me," she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked
+Ephraim Yeates to put her in her saddle.
+
+Richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my
+urging and let us set him upon his beast. Once safe in the saddle, we
+lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back
+to hold him erect. This last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas
+most ingenious. The forked limb, in shape like a Y, was set astride the
+cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to Dick's legs and to the
+girths. Thus the upright stem of the inverted Y became an easy back-rest
+for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was
+little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.
+
+When all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain
+top; and now even the old borderer and the Indian confessed their
+inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they
+knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight,
+and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.
+
+This route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we
+must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy
+camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the
+vengeance-cry. But here again there was no alternative, and we set us in
+order for the descent, with Yeates and the Catawba ahead, the women and
+Dick in the midst, and her Apostolic Majesty's late captain of hussars,
+masquerading as a British trooper, to bring on the rear.
+
+Once in motion beneath the blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly
+lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a
+short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head
+of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a
+thickset grove of the pines, and Ephraim Yeates appeared at my stirrup
+to say:
+
+"H'ist ye off your nag, Cap'n John, and let's take a far'well squinch at
+the inimy whilst we can."
+
+"Where? what enemy?" I would ask, slipping from the saddle at his word.
+
+"Why, the hoss-captain's varmints, to be sure; or what-all the
+abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. We ain't more than a cat's
+jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on 'em this
+morning."
+
+I saw not what was to be gained by any such long-range espial in the
+darkness. None the less, I followed the old man to the cliff's edge. He
+was wiser in his forecastings than I was in mine. There was a thing to
+look at, and light enough to see it by. One of the missile stones, it
+seems, had crashed into the great fire, scattering the brands in all
+directions. The pine-bough troop shelters were ablaze, and creeping
+serpents of fire were worming their way hither and yon over the year-old
+leaf beds in the wood. Ever and anon some pine sapling in the path of
+these fiery serpents would go up in a torch-like flare; and so, as I
+say, there was light enough.
+
+What we looked down upon was not inaptly pictured out by Ephraim
+Yeates's Scripture phrase, the abomination of desolation. Every vestige
+of the camp save the glowing skeletons of the troop shelters had
+disappeared, and the swarded savanna was become a blackened chaos-blot
+on the fair woodland scene. I have said that the powder-sheltering
+boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had
+toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a
+wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast
+upon the camp.
+
+At first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space. But a moment
+later, when three or four of the sapling torches blazed up together, we
+made out some half dozen figures of human beings--whether red or white
+we could not tell--stumbling and reeling about among the rocks like
+blind men drunken.
+
+At sight of these the old hunter doffed his cap and fell upon his knees
+with hands uplifted to pour out his zealot's soul in the awful sentences
+of the Psalmist's imprecation.
+
+"'Let God arise, and let His inimies be scattered; let them also that
+hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou
+drive them away; and like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the
+ungodly perish at the presence of God....'"
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH
+
+
+It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into
+the Great Trace near the ambush ground where we had set our trap for the
+peace men.
+
+The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were
+burning like points of white fire in the black dome of the heavens. As
+often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in
+fullest tide; and a whip-will's-widow, disturbed by our approach,
+fluttered to a higher perch and set up his plaintive protest.
+
+At our turning eastward on the trace, the old hunter massed our little
+company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to
+follow cautiously, tossed his bridle rein to the Catawba and went on
+ahead to feel out the way.
+
+This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the
+first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred
+we were together and measurably alone.
+
+Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding
+bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But,
+womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.
+
+"Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?" she said, bitterly; and
+then: "How you must despise me!"
+
+I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I
+begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing
+the outlet of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my
+tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the
+command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back
+smartly.
+
+"You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I
+speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise
+you!"
+
+"Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!" I protested. "'Tis my
+misfortune to be ever blundering."
+
+But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of
+heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again
+throughout the passage perilous.
+
+By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting
+any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old
+borderer awaiting us.
+
+"Ez I allow, we've smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole
+bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," he said, mixing metaphor,
+Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont. Then he put a leg
+over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: "From now on, old Jehu, the
+son o' Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind,
+Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your
+sword-p'int."
+
+Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the
+valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed
+after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses
+pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace
+was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur,
+pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in
+the blind race.
+
+I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long
+night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The
+over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and
+the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road.
+Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to
+thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its
+fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky
+ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the
+opener forest of the hill country.
+
+The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of
+a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was
+toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba
+or the Broad.
+
+"'Tis the Broad itself," said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking;
+"and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one
+the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch
+Broad."
+
+"But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright," said I.
+
+"So it do, so it do--in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for
+Sunday, by spells."
+
+"If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege
+country, as I take it."
+
+"Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I
+reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little
+gal?" this last to Margery.
+
+Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her
+grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.
+
+"I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for
+me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so."
+
+"Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be
+till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to
+give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o' sleep immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner, now."
+
+So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and
+when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the
+horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came
+to help me ease Dick down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no
+more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever
+delirium had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb
+contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.
+
+"How did we come out of it, Jack?" he asked, when we had let him feel
+the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.
+
+"As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself.
+You're the heaviest loser."
+
+He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who
+would not come anigh whilst I was with him.
+
+"That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the
+richest gainer."
+
+"What did you dream?"
+
+He beckoned me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and
+that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me."
+
+"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a
+bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for
+the breakfast cakes.
+
+'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all
+that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we
+ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and
+nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.
+
+At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log
+cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest.
+Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the
+journey paused.
+
+We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with
+stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood.
+Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting
+about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the
+settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,--of its own accord,
+or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,--and at the end of
+the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the
+forked stick to hold him in the saddle.
+
+After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than
+that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's
+rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day
+will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather
+to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind,
+or of the Catawba's.
+
+You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the
+wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the
+pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled
+the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from
+slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.
+
+But when the strain was off and Dick was up and fit again, the misery
+of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting
+sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her
+loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble of his love for her
+in his feverish vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a
+thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow
+of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her
+word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud
+for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for
+aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her
+notice.
+
+And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard
+Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all
+the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he
+was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward
+faring.
+
+As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me
+sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave it
+out in solitude, cursing the day that I was born, and that other more
+misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impassable between these
+two.
+
+What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great
+war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an
+honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you
+choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now
+gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was beyond
+forgiveness.
+
+'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach
+Queensborough by evening, that my deliverance came. I say deliverance
+because at the moment it had the look of a short shrift and a ready
+halter.
+
+We had crossed our own Catawba and were putting our horses at the steep
+bank on the outcoming side, when my saddle slipped. Dismounting to
+tighten the girth, I called to the others to press on, saying I should
+overtake them shortly.
+
+The promise was never kept. I scarce had my head under the saddle flap
+before a couple of stout knaves in homespun, appearing from I know not
+where, had me fast gripped by the arms, whilst a third made sure of the
+horse.
+
+"A despatch rider," said the bigger of the two who pinioned me. "Search
+him, Martin, lad, whilst I hold him; then we'll pay him out for
+Tarleton's hanging of poor Sandy M'Guire."
+
+I held my peace and let them search, taking the threat for a bit of
+soldier bullyragging meant to keep me quiet. But when they had turned
+the pockets of my borrowed coat inside out and ripped the lining and
+made it otherwise as much the worse for their mishandling as it was for
+wear, the third man fetched a rope.
+
+"Did you mean that, friend?--about the hanging?" I asked, wondering if
+this should be my loophole of escape from the life grown hateful.
+
+"Sure enough," said the big man, coolly. "You'd best be saying your
+prayers."
+
+I laughed. "Were you wearing my coat and I yours, you might hang me and
+welcome; in truth, you may as it is. Which tree will you have me at?"
+
+The man stared at me as at one demented. Then he burst out in a guffaw.
+"Damme, if you bean't a cool plucked one! I've a mind to take you to the
+colonel."
+
+"Don't do it, my friend. Though I am something loath to be snuffed out
+by the men of my own side, we need not haggle over the niceties. Point
+out your tree."
+
+"No, by God! you're too willing. What's at the back of all this?"
+
+"Nothing, save a decent reluctance to spoil your sport. Have at it, man,
+and let's be done with it."
+
+"Not if you beg me on your knees. You'll go to the colonel, I say, and
+he may hang you if he sees fit. You must be a most damnable villain to
+want to die by the first rope you lay eyes on."
+
+"That is as it may be. Who is your colonel?"
+
+"Nay, rather, who are you?"
+
+I gave my name and circumstance and was loosed of the hand-grip, though
+the third man dropped the cord and stepped back to hold me covered with
+his rifle.
+
+"An Ireton, you say? Not little Jock, surely!"
+
+"No, big Jock; big enough to lay you on your back, though you do have a
+hand as thick as a ham."
+
+He ignored the challenge and stuck to his text. "I never thought to see
+the son of old Mad-bull Roger wearing a red coat," he said.
+
+"That is nothing. Many as good a Whig as I am has been forced to wear a
+red coat ere this, or go barebacked. But why don't you knot the halter?
+In common justice you should either hang me or feed me. 'Tis hard upon
+noon, and I breakfasted early."
+
+"Fall in!" said the big man; and so I was marched quickly aside from the
+road and into the denser thicketing of the wood. Here my captors
+blindfolded me, and after spinning me around to make me lose the compass
+points, hurried me away to their encampment which was inland from the
+stream, though not far, for I could still hear the distance-minished
+splashing of the water.
+
+When the kerchief was pulled from my eyes I was standing in the midst of
+a mounted riflemen's halt-camp, face to face with a young officer
+wearing the uniform of the colonelcy in the North Carolina home troops.
+He was a handsome young fellow, with curling hair and trim side-whiskers
+to frame a face fine-lined and eager--the face of a gentleman well-born
+and well-bred.
+
+"Captain Ireton?" he said; by which I guessed that one of my capturers
+had run on ahead to make report.
+
+"The same," I replied.
+
+"And you are the son of Mr. Justice Roger Ireton, of Appleby Hundred?"
+
+"I have that honor."
+
+He gave me his hand most cordially.
+
+"You are very welcome, Captain; Davie is my name. I trust we may come to
+know each other better. You are in disguise, as I take it; do you bring
+news of the army?"
+
+"On the contrary, I am thirsting for news," I rejoined. "I and three
+others have but now returned from pursuing a British and Indian powder
+convoy into the mountains to the westward. We have been out five weeks
+and more."
+
+He looked at me curiously. "You and three others?" he queried. "Come
+apart and tell me about it whilst Pompey is broiling the venison. I
+scent a whole Iliad in that word of yours, Captain Ireton."
+
+"One thing first, if you please, Colonel Davie," I begged. "My
+companions are faring forward on the road to Queensborough. They know
+naught of my detention. Will you send a man to overtake them with a note
+from me?"
+
+The colonel indulged me in the most gentlemanly manner; and when my note
+to Jennifer was despatched we sat together at the roots of a great oak
+and I told him all that had befallen our little rescue party. He heard
+me through patiently, and when the tale was ended was good enough to say
+that I had earned a commission for my part in the affair. I laughed and
+promptly shifted that burden to Ephraim Yeates's shoulders.
+
+"The old hunter was our general, Colonel Davie. He did all of the
+planning and the greater part of the executing. But for him and the
+friendly Catawba, it would have gone hard with Jennifer and me."
+
+"I fear you are over-modest, Captain," was all the reply I got; and then
+my kindly host fell amuse. When he spoke again 'twas to give me a résumé
+in brief of the military operations North and South.
+
+At the North, as his news ran, affairs remained as they had been, save
+that now the French king had sent an army to supplement the fleet, and
+Count Rochambeau and the allies were encamped on Rhode Island ready to
+take the field.
+
+In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that
+August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little
+changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first
+to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving
+to reassemble his scattered forces.
+
+A few military partizans, like my host, had kept the field, doing what
+the few might against the many to retard my Lord Cornwallis's northward
+march; and a week earlier the colonel with his handful of mounted
+riflemen had dared to oppose his entry into Charlotte.
+
+"'Twas no more than a hint to his Lordship that we were not afraid of
+him," said my doughty colonel. "You know the town, I take it?"
+
+"Very well, indeed."
+
+"Well, we had harassed him all the way from Blair's Mill, and 'twas
+midnight when we reached Charlotte. There we determined to make a stand
+and give him a taste of our mettle. We dismounted, took post behind the
+stone wall of the court house green and under cover of the fences along
+the road."
+
+"Good! an ambush," said I.
+
+"Hardly that, since they were looking to have resistance. Tarleton was
+sick, and Major Hanger commanded the British van. He charged, and we
+peppered them smartly. They tried it again, and this time their infantry
+outflanked us. We abandoned the court house and formed again in the
+eastern edge of the town; and now, bless you! 'twas my Lord Charles
+himself who had to ride forward and flout at his men for their want of
+enterprise."
+
+"But you could never hope to hold on against such odds!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, no; but we held them for a third charge, and beat them back, too.
+Then they brought up two more regiments and we mounted and got off in
+tolerably good order, losing only six men killed. But Colonel Francis
+Locke was one of these; and my brave Joe Graham was all but cut to
+pieces--a sore blow to us just now."
+
+The colonel sighed and a silence fell upon us. 'Twas I who broke it to
+say: "Then we are still playing a losing hand in the South, as I take
+it?"
+
+"'Tis worse than that. As the game stands we have played all our trumps
+and have not so much as a long suit left. Cornwallis will go on as he
+pleases and overrun the state, and the militia will never stand to front
+him again under Horatio Gates. Worse still, Ferguson is off to the
+westward, embodying the Tories by the hundred, and we shall have
+burnings and hangings and harryings to the king's taste."
+
+I nursed my knee a moment and then said: "What may one man do to help,
+Colonel Davie?"
+
+He looked up quickly. "Much, if you are that man, and you do not value
+your life too highly, Captain Ireton."
+
+"You may leave that out of the question," said I. "I shall count it the
+happiest moment of my life when I shall have done something worth their
+killing me for."
+
+Again he gave me that curious look I had noted before. Then he laughed.
+
+"If you were as young as Major Joe Graham, and had been well crossed in
+love, I could understand you better, Captain. But, jesting aside, there
+is a thing to do, and you are the man to do it. Our spies are thick in
+Cornwallis's camp, but what is needed is some master spirit who can plot
+as well as spy for us. Major Ferguson moves as Cornwallis pulls the
+strings. Could we know the major's instructions and designs, we might
+cut him off, bring the Tory uprising to the ground, and so hearten the
+country beyond measure. I say we might cut him off, though I know not
+where the men would come from to do it."
+
+"Well?" said I, when he paused.
+
+"The preliminary is some better information than our spies can give us.
+Now you have been an officer in the British service, and--"
+
+I smiled. "Truly; and I have the honor, if you please to call it so, of
+his Lordship's acquaintance. Also, I have that of Colonel Tarleton and
+the members of his staff, the same having tried and condemned me as a
+spy at Appleby Hundred some few weeks before this chase I have told you
+of."
+
+His face fell. "Then, of course, it is out of the question for you to
+show yourself in Cornwallis's headquarters."
+
+I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.
+
+"On the contrary, Colonel Davie, I am more than ever at your service.
+Let me have a cut of your venison and a feed for my horse, and I shall
+be at my Lord's headquarters as soon as the nag can carry me there."
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET
+
+
+"Tis a very pretty hazard, Captain Ireton. But can it be brought off
+successfully, think you?"
+
+"As I have said, it hangs somewhat upon the safety of my portmanteau. If
+that has come through unseized to Mr. Pettigrew at Charlotte, and I can
+lay hands on it, 'twill be half the battle."
+
+"You say you left it behind you at New Berne?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Carey was to forward it as he could."
+
+Colonel Davie had given me bite and sup, and I was ready to take the
+road. My plan, such as it was, had been determined upon, and to the
+furthering of it, the colonel had written me a letter to a friend in the
+town who might shelter me for a night and make the needed inquiry for my
+belongings. Also, he had given me another letter, of which more anon,
+and had pressed upon me a small purse of gold pieces--a treasure rare
+enough in patriot hands in that impoverished time.
+
+When all was done, two of my late captors were ordered to set me
+straight in the road; and some half-hour past noon I had shaken hands
+with the big fellow in homespun who had been so bent upon hanging me
+without benefit of clergy, had crossed the river, and was making the
+first looping in a detour which should bring me into Charlotte from the
+westward.
+
+'Twas drawing on toward evening, and I had recrossed the river a mile or
+more below Appleby Hundred, when I began to meet the outposts of the
+British army. I was promptly halted by the first of these; but my
+borrowed uniform and a ready word or two passed me within the lines as a
+courier riding post to headquarters from Major Ferguson in the west.
+
+The lieutenant in command of the first vedette line was not
+over-curious. He asked me a few questions about the major's plans and
+dispositions,--questions which, thanks to Colonel Davie's information, I
+was able to answer glibly enough, swallowed my tale whole, and was so
+obliging as to give me the password for the night to help me through the
+inner sentry lines.
+
+Thus fortified, I rode on boldly, and having the countersign the
+difficulties vanished. When I was come to town it was well past
+candle-lighting; and the patrol was out in force. But by dint of using
+the password freely I made my way unhindered to the house of the
+gentleman to whom Colonel Davie's letter accredited me.
+
+Here, however, the difficulties began. Though the camp of the army lay
+just without the town to the southward, the officers were quartered in
+every house, and that of Colonel Davie's friend was full to
+overflowing. What was to be done we knew not, but at the last moment my
+friend's friend thought of an expedient and wrote a note for me whilst I
+waited, half in hiding, in the outer hall.
+
+"'Tis a desperate chance, but these are desperate times," said my
+would-be helper. "I am sending you to the town house of one of our
+plantation seigneurs--a man who is fish, flesh or fowl, as his interest
+demands. I hear he came in to-day to take protection, and there is a
+chance that he will shelter you for the sake of your red coat and a gold
+piece or two. But I warn you, you must be what you appear to be--a
+soldier of the king--and not what this note of Colonel Davie's says you
+are."
+
+Seeing a wide field of danger-chances in this haphazarding, I would have
+asked more about this trimming gentleman to whom I was to be handed on;
+but at that moment there came a thundering at the door, and my anxious
+host was fain to hustle me out through the kitchen as he could, catching
+up a black boy on the way to be my guide.
+
+"God speed you," he said at parting. "Make your footing good for the
+night, if you can, and we'll see what can be done to-morrow. I'll send
+your portmanteau around in the morning, if so be Mr. Pettigrew has it."
+
+With that I was out in the night again, turning and doubling after my
+guide, who seemed to be greatly afeard lest I should come nigh enough to
+cast an evil eye upon him.
+
+'Twas but a little distance we had to go, and I had no word out of my
+black rascal till we reached the door-stone of a familiar mansion but
+one remove from the corner of the court house green. Here, with a
+stuttering "D-d-dis de house, Massa," he fled and left me to enter as I
+could.
+
+Since the street was busily astir with redcoat officers and men coming
+and going, and any squad of these might be the questioners to doubt my
+threadbare courier tale, I lost no time in running up the steps and
+hammering a peal with the heavy knocker. Through the side-lights I could
+see that the wide entrance hall was for the moment unoccupied; but at
+the knocker-lifting I had a flitting glimpse of some one--a little man
+all in sober black--coming down the stair. There was no immediate answer
+to my peal, but when I would have knocked again the door was swung back
+and I stepped quickly within to find myself face to face with--Margery.
+
+I know not which of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I
+do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me
+a low-dipped curtsy and gave me my greeting.
+
+"I bid you good evening, Captain Ireton," she said, coldly; and then
+with still more of the frost of unwelcome in her voice: "To what may we
+be indebted for this honor?"
+
+Now, chilling as these words were, they thrilled me to my finger-tips,
+for they were the first she had spoken to me since the night of my
+offending in the black gorge of the far-off western mountains. None the
+less, they were blankly unanswerable, and had the door been open I
+should doubtless have vanished as I had come. Of all the houses in the
+town this was surely the last I should have run to for refuge had I
+known the name of its master; and it was some upflashing of this thought
+that helped me find my tongue.
+
+"I never guessed this was your father's house," I stammered, bowing low
+to match her curtsy. "I beg you will pardon me, and let me go as I
+came."
+
+She laid a hand on the door-knob. "Is--is there any one here whom you
+would see?" she asked; and now her eyes did not meet mine, and I would
+think the chill had melted a little.
+
+"No. I was begging a night's lodging of a friend whose house is full. He
+sent me here with a note to--ah--to your father, as I suppose, though in
+his haste he did not mention the name."
+
+She held out her hand. "Give me the letter."
+
+"Nay," said I; "that would be but thankless work. Knowing me, your
+father must needs conceive it his duty to denounce me."
+
+"Give it me!" she insisted; this with an impatient little stamp of the
+foot and an upglance of the compelling eyes that would have constrained
+me to do a far foolisher thing, had she asked it.
+
+So I gave her the letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read
+it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved
+nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon
+her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom
+rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in
+her fair white neck. And with the seeing I became a fool of love again
+in very earnest, and was within a hair's breadth of sinking honor and
+all else in an outpouring of such words as a man may say once to one
+woman in all the world--and having said them may never unsay them.
+
+'Twas a most practical little thing she did that saved me from falling
+headlong into this last ditch of dishonor. Twisting the letter into a
+spill she stood on tiptoe to light it at one of the candles, saying:
+"'Twas a foolish thing to put on paper, and might well hang the writer
+in such times as these. He says you are a king's man and well known to
+him, and you are neither." But when the letter was a crisp of blackened
+paper-ash she turned upon me, and once again the changeful eyes were
+cold and her words were stranger-formal.
+
+"What is it you would have me do, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"Nothing," I made haste to say; "nothing save to believe that I came
+here unwittingly--and to let me go."
+
+"Where will you go? The town is alive with those who would--who would--"
+
+"Who would show me scant mercy, you would say. True; and yet I came
+hither--to the town, I mean--of my own free will."
+
+Her mood changed in the pivoting fraction of an instant, and now the
+beautiful eyes were alight and warm and pleadingly eloquent.
+
+"Oh, why did you come? Are you--are you what they said you were?"
+
+"A spy? If I am, you would scarce expect me to confess it, even to you."
+
+"'Tis dishonorable--most dishonorable!" she cried. "I could respect a
+brave soldier enemy; but a spy--"
+
+There was a clattering of hoofs in the street and a jingle of
+sword-scabbards on the door-stone. I wheeled to face the newcomers,
+determined now to front it boldly as a desperate man at bay. But before
+the fumbling hands without could find the door-knob Margery was beside
+me, all a-flutter in a trembling-fit of excitement.
+
+"Up the stair, quickly, _pour l'amour de Dieu!_" she whispered; and we
+were at the clock landing when the great door opened and some half-dozen
+king's officers came in. We crouched together behind the balustrade till
+they should pass beyond the sight of us, and in the group I marked a man
+stout and heavy built, walking full solidly for his two-and-forty years.
+He wore his own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for
+the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the
+candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed,
+long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and
+marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I
+had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on
+his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the
+field--Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses in the town to
+choose among, I had blundered into this--my Lord's own headquarters.
+
+I had but a passing glimpse of the incoming group, for when it was well
+beneath the turn of the stair, my lady had me up and running again,
+driving me on before her to the chamber floor above, along a dimly
+lighted corridor with many turnings, and so to a _cul-de-sac_ in the
+same--a doorless passage with a high dormer window in the end and no
+other apparent means of egress.
+
+Margery had snatched a candle from one of the corridor holders in the
+flight, and now she bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did
+it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to
+have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had
+turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot.
+
+Beyond the door lay a raftered garret half filled with cast-off house
+lumber and lighted and aired by two high roof windows. Into this she led
+me, with a finger on her lip for silence. A hum of voices, the clinking
+of glass, and now and again a hearty soldier laugh told me that my
+garret was above some living-room of the house.
+
+While I stood, boots in hand, she found a makeshift candlestick and in
+a trice had spread me a pallet on an ancient oaken settle big enough to
+serve for a choir stall in a cathedral.
+
+"You'll be safe here for the night, if so be you will make no more noise
+than a rat might make," she whispered. "_Mais, mon Dieu!_ 'tis a
+terrible risk. How you will get off in the morning I do not know."
+
+"Leave that to me," I rejoined. Then I remembered the portmanteau and
+the promise that it should be sent hither. Here was a further
+complication, and I must needs beg a boon of her. "A black boy will
+bring my portmanteau in the morning. I have a decent desire to be hanged
+in clean clothing; may I beg you to--"
+
+She made a quick little gesture of impatience; at the further
+complication, or at my boldness in asking, I knew not which. But her
+whispered reply was of assent, and then she turned to leave me.
+
+At that a sudden fierce desire to know why she had thus befriended me
+came to throttle prudence.
+
+"One more word before you go, Mistress Margery. Will you tell me why you
+have done this for the man who can serve you only by thrusting his neck
+into the hangman's noose?"
+
+She was silent for a little space, and I knew not what emotion it was
+that moved her to turn away and cover her face with her hands. But when
+she spoke her voice was low and tremulous with pent-up anger, as I
+thought.
+
+"Truly, Captain Ireton, you have done a thing to make me hate you--and
+myself, as well. But I may not forget my duty, sir."
+
+And with this cruel word she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+IN WHICH I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS
+
+
+You are not to suppose that the hazards of this hiding place in my Lord
+Cornwallis's headquarters would keep me from sleeping well and soundly.
+One of the things a soldier learns soonest is to take his rest when and
+as he can; and after peering curiously into the nooks and corners of my
+garret to make sure I was alone, I flung myself a-sprawl on the broad
+settle and was dropping off into forgetfulness when I heard a tapping at
+the wainscot.
+
+It fetched me wide awake with a start, and I was up and weaponed
+instantly--having taken the precaution to lay my sword in easy reach
+before blowing out the candle. Groping my way cautiously to the secret
+door, I crouched and listened. All was silent save for the intermittent
+clamor of the wassailers in the room beneath. After waiting a full
+minute I opened the door and looked without. The high dormer window in
+the end of the corridor made the darkness something less than visible,
+and I could see that the passage was empty. But on the floor at my feet
+was my supper; a roasted fowl on a server, hot from the spit, with
+maize bread and garnishings fit for an epicure.
+
+Since, as an appanage of Appleby Hundred, this was mine own house, and,
+by consequence, the fowl was mine, I ate as a hungry man should, making
+no scruple on the score of pride. Nor did I forget to be grateful to my
+lady; though when I remembered that this was doubtless but another leaf
+out of her duty-book, the meat was like to choke me. And it was this
+thought that made me resolve thrice over to loose her from the onerous
+burden of me so soon as ever the morning light should come to help me
+find the way out of my covert prison.
+
+None the less, for all my fine resolves to be astir and off by daybreak,
+the sun was shining broadly in at my garret window when I awoke.
+
+Seeing the sun, I tumbled out of my settle-bed, with a malediction on
+the sloth that had bound me so fast, and made for the door. But some one
+had been before me, entering whilst I slept. On a broken chair were a
+basin and ewer, with soap and towels; beside the chair was my
+portmanteau; and on a deal box, neatly covered with a linen cloth, was
+my breakfast.
+
+You, my dears, who have your maid or man to tell you when your bath is
+ready, and to lay out the fresh, clean garments sweet from the
+laundering, may wonder that I put away the thought of flight and let the
+breakfast cool whilst I shaved and washed and scrubbed, and doffed the
+vagabond and donned the gentleman. I did it; did it leisurely, rolling
+the privilege as a sweet morsel under my tongue. They say the raiment
+never makes the man; 'tis a half-truth only. For in his own regard, at
+least, the man is vagabond or gentleman as he may dress the one part or
+the other. And I am sure of this; that when I drew up another of the
+cast-off chairs to sit at meat, freshly groomed, and clad in the field
+uniform of a captain of her Apostolic Majesty's Hussars, I was the
+fitter by many transmigrations to cope with fate or any other adversary.
+
+And now, the claims of decency paid in full, and the keen edge of hunger
+somewhat dulled, I was free to think of my sweet lady's loving-kindness
+to one she hated--and to wonder what she would do and be for one she
+loved. As you would guess, there were dregs of bitterness in that cup;
+and I was once again set sharp upon relieving her of the burden of me.
+
+Having my Austrian uniform, I was now ready to move in that venture
+outlined in part to Colonel Davie; but to set my plan in action I must
+first get free of the house unseen by my Lord or any of his suite. How
+to do this unaided I could not determine; and, since any fresh
+blundering would surely breed new trouble for Margery, I was forced to
+wait for her return.
+
+I made sure she would come, if only to be the sooner quit of me; and so
+she did, tapping at the wainscot door whilst I was dallying with the
+breakfast leavings. 'Twas worth something to see her start of surprise
+when I opened to her; but she was far too true a lady to be one thing
+to the unwashed vagabond and another to the gentleman-clad.
+
+I gave her good morning, and was beginning in some formal fashion to
+thank her for her thoughtful care, when she cut me short.
+
+"'Tis my bounden duty, sir," she said, twanging once again upon that
+frayed string. "You are my guest and my--husband; though God knows I
+would you were neither."
+
+"_Merci, Madame_," said I; stung so sharply that the retort would out in
+spite of everything. "As once before, I am your poor misfortunate
+pensioner; but this time you are not less willing to give than I am to
+receive."
+
+She gave me a look that I could not fathom, and for a flitting instant I
+could have sworn there was a mocking smile a-lurk at the back of the
+beautiful eyes. Then she went straight to the subject-matter of her
+errand, brushing aside the small passage at arms as if it had not been.
+
+"You are in a most perilous situation, Captain Ireton; do you know it?
+News of your presence in Charlotte has got abroad, and at this very
+moment Tarleton's dragoons are making a house-to-house search for you."
+
+"So; some one has betrayed me?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Do you know who it was?"
+
+She nodded again.
+
+I considered of it for a little time, and then said: "I must not be
+taken here. Will your--ah--_duty_ stretch the length of showing me an
+unwatched door?"
+
+"There are no doors unwatched. You must stay here till nightfall."
+
+"Nay, that I will not. Will you tell me who it was set them on?"
+
+"'Twas a man you hate--and who hates you heartily in return. He saw you
+come here last night; he knows you are here now--or guesses it."
+
+I had no right to pry into her confidence as a thief would break into a
+house. But I was loath to fight my battle in the dark if she, or any
+one, could give me light.
+
+"His name, if you may give it, Mistress Margery. It may point the way
+out of this coil."
+
+"'Tis Owen Pengarvin. He was here last night when you came."
+
+Now I remembered the little man in black whom I had seen coming down the
+stair whilst I knocked at the door. But this left me in a greater maze
+than ever.
+
+"If he knows I am here, why does he let them search elsewhere?"
+
+At this she looked away from me, and I made sure I saw the sweet chin
+quiver when she spoke.
+
+"He has reasons of his own; reasons of--of--" but instead of telling me
+what they were she broke off to say: "But now you know why all the doors
+of this house are under guard."
+
+"Truly," said I; and therewith I fell to pacing up and down the narrow
+clear-way in the garret, striving to see how I might come off with
+nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.
+
+'Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me.
+Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing,
+the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion
+was nipped in the bud. I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made
+to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation
+whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.
+
+When that leaven began to work in me I was fit for the daringest thing
+that offered; so I paused to ask if my Lord Cornwallis were yet in the
+house.
+
+"He is writing letters in his bed-room," was her answer.
+
+"If you will show me the way thither I shall be your poor debtor by that
+much more."
+
+"I will not--unless you first tell me what you mean to do." She said it
+firmly, but now I was fronting death and could be as firm as she.
+
+"If you will not show me the way, I shall find it for myself." So much I
+said; but as for telling her that I meant to save his Lordship and all
+the others the trouble of running me down, I could not do that.
+
+"You are going to give yourself up," she said; and when I would not deny
+it, she darted before me and set her back against the wainscot door.
+"'Tis folly, folly!" she cried. "He would but pull the bell-cord and--"
+
+"And give the order that Colonel Tarleton's sentence be executed upon
+me, you would say. Be it so. But in that event I can at least clear you
+and your father of any complicity in my hiding."
+
+"I say you shall not go!"
+
+What touch of savagery is it in a man that will not suffer him to let a
+woman, loved or unloved, stand in the last resort against his will? At
+any other time I would have pleaded with her; would have ended, mayhap,
+by weakly deferring to her wish. But now--well, you must remember, my
+dears, that I was the trapped rat. I took her gently in my arms, set her
+aside, and stepped out into the corridor.
+
+I looked for nothing less than a volcano-burst of righteous indignation
+to pay me out for this piece of tyranny. But now, as twice or thrice
+before, my lady showed me how little a man may know of a woman's moods.
+
+"You need not be so masterful rough with me," she said, with a pouting
+of the sweet lips that set me back upon that thought of a wayward child
+wanting to be kissed. "If you say I must, I am in duty bound to show you
+the way." And so she led on and I followed, in a deeper maze than any
+she had ever set me in.
+
+Arrived at a pair of doors in the main passage, she showed me the one
+that opened to my Lord's bed-chamber and ran away; ran with her hands to
+her face as if to shut out a sight which would not bear looking upon.
+
+I turned my back stiffly upon this newer wonder, pulled myself together
+and rapped on the door. A voice within bade me enter; the door opened
+under my hand and I stood in the presence of the man who, as I made no
+doubt, would shortly summon his guards and have me out to my rope and
+tree.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+HOW I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN
+
+
+The room in which I found myself was the guest-chamber, furnished
+luxuriously, for that day and place, in French-fashioned mahogany and
+gilt. The bed was high and richly canopied, as befitted a peer's resting
+place; there was a square of Turkish drugget on the floor, a cheerful
+fire burning in the chimney arch, and on the small table whereat the
+occupant of the guest-room had lately breakfasted, a goodly display of
+the Ireton silver.
+
+My Lord was busy at his writing-desk when I entered; but when he looked
+up I saw the light of instant recognition in his eye. Never, I think,
+did another prisoner at the bar strive harder to read his sentence in
+his judge's eyes than I did in that moment of suspense. I liked not much
+the look he gave me; but his greeting was affable and kindly enough.
+
+"Ah, Captain Ireton; 'tis you, is it? We are well met, at last. They
+told me you were gone to join the rebels, did they not?"
+
+Here was an opening for a bold man, and in a flash I came to the
+right-about, choked down the defiance I had meant to hurl at him, and
+took quick counsel of cool audacity.
+
+"Indeed, my Lord, I know not what they have told you. In times past, the
+king had no truer soldier than I; and when I came across seas 'twas not
+to fight against him. But that I have not joined the rebels is no fault
+of certain of your Lordship's officers."
+
+"Say you so? But how is this? Surely I am not mistaken. I could be
+certain Colonel Tarleton reported your taking as a spy, and his trying
+of you. And was there not something about a rescue at the last moment by
+a band of these border bravos? But stay; let us have the colonel's story
+at first hands. Have the goodness to ring the bell for me, will you,
+Captain?"
+
+The crisis was come. A pull at the bell-cord would summon the guard, and
+the guard would be sent after Colonel Tarleton. Well, said the demon
+Despair, 'tis time you were gone to make room for Richard Jennifer; and
+I laid a hand upon the tasseled rope. But when I would have rung, all
+the man-pride, of race and of soldier training, rose up to bid me fight
+for space to strike one good blow in freedom's cause by way of
+leave-taking.
+
+So, as it had been an afterthought, I said: "A word further with you
+first, my Lord, and then, if you please, I will call the guard. All you
+remember is true, save as to the principal fact. So far from being a spy
+in intent, or even a partizan of either side, I was at the time but
+newly come into the province, knowing little of the cause of quarrel and
+caring still less. But Captain Falconnet and Colonel Tarleton did their
+earnest best to make a rebel of me out of hand."
+
+"Ah? But the proof of all this, Captain Ireton."
+
+"The best I can offer is the present fact of my coming to place myself
+at your Lordship's disposal, being moved thereto by your Lordship's own
+desire expressed in an order sent some weeks since to Sir Francis
+Falconnet."
+
+"So?--then you knew of that order?"
+
+"Captain Falconnet showed it to me after I was condemned and the firing
+squad was drawn up to snuff me out."
+
+My Lord Charles gave me the courtier smile that so endeared him to his
+soldiers,--he was well-loved of his men,--and bade me sit.
+
+"The plot thickens, as Mr. Richardson would say. Let me have your story,
+Captain Ireton. I would rejoice to know why Captain Sir Francis
+Falconnet saw fit to disobey his orders."
+
+I was clear of the lee shore and the breakers at last, but I was fain to
+believe that not Machiavelli himself could hope to weather the storm in
+the open. How much or how little did Lord Cornwallis remember of Colonel
+Tarleton's report? How explicit had that report been?--was there any
+mention in it of my eavesdropping at the conference between Captain John
+Stuart and the baronet; of my attempt to warn the over-mountain men
+against the Indian-arming? Could I hope to tell his Lordship a tale so
+near the truth as to be unassailable by Tarleton and his officers, by
+Gilbert Stair and the spiteful little pettifogger, and yet so deftly
+garbled as to keep my neck out of the halter for the time being?
+
+All these questions thronged upon me as a mob to pull cool reason from
+her seat, and I could only play the part of the trapped rat and snap
+back at them. Yet my Lord Cornwallis was waiting for his answer, and a
+single moment's hesitation might breed suspicion.
+
+You must forgive me, my dears, if I confess it beyond me to set down
+here in measured words the tale I told his Lordship. A lie is a lie, be
+it told in never so good a cause; a thing deplorable and not to be
+glozed over or boasted of after the fact. So I beg you to let these
+quibblings to which I was driven rest in oblivion, figuring to
+yourselves that I used all the truth I dared, and that I strove through
+it all not wholly to sink the gentleman and the man of honor in the spy.
+
+'Twas but a bridge of glass when all was said; a bridge that carried me
+safely over for the moment into my Lord's confidence, yet one which a
+pebble flung by any one of a dozen hands might shiver in the dropping of
+an eyelid.
+
+"Truly, you have had a most romantic experience," said his Lordship,
+when I had made an end. Then he lay back in his chair and laughed till
+the stout body of him shook again. "And all about a little wench of the
+provincials. Well, well; Sir Francis was always a sad dog with the
+women. But all this was in the early summer, you say; where have you
+been since?"
+
+Here was a chance for more romancing, this time of a sort less
+dangerous. So I drew breath and plunged again, telling how I had been
+carried off by my captor-rescuers; how I had fallen into the hands of
+the Indians--not all of whom, I would remind his Lordship, were friendly
+to the king; and lastly how I had but lately escaped from the mountain
+fastnesses back of Major Ferguson's camp at Gilbert Town. At this point
+my Lord interrupted the tale-telling.
+
+"So you know of the major and his doings? I would you had brought me
+late news of him. 'Tis a week since his last courier reached us."
+
+This was the moment for the playing of my trump card--the only one I
+held. I rose, bowed, took from my pocket that other letter given me by
+Colonel Davie and handed it to his Lordship. 'Twas Major Ferguson's last
+report, intercepted by one of Davie's vigilant scouting parties.
+
+"Ah!" said my Lord; and I strolled to the window whilst he read the
+letter.
+
+When I turned to front him again he was all affability; and I knew I was
+safe--for the time, at least.
+
+"The major commends you highly as a good man and a true, Captain
+Ireton," he said, and truly the letter did contain a warm-hearted
+commendation of "the bearer," whose name, for safety's sake, was
+omitted; and not only this, but the writer desired to have his man back
+again. Then my Lord added: "You are here to take your old service again,
+I assume?"
+
+I hesitated. There be things that even a spy may balk at; and the taking
+of the oath of allegiance to the other side I conceived to be one of
+them. So I said:
+
+"I have worn many uniforms since I doffed that of King George, my Lord,
+and--"
+
+He laughed cheerily. "'But me no buts,' Captain Ireton; once an
+Englishman, always an Englishman, you know. I shall assign you to duty
+in my own family."
+
+At this I made a bold stroke. "Let it be then as an officer of her
+Apostolic Majesty's service, and your Lordship's guest for the time.
+Believe me, it is thus I may best serve your--ah--the cause."
+
+"As how?" he would ask.
+
+I smiled and touched the braided jacket of my hussar uniform.
+
+"As an Austrian officer on a tour of observation in the campaign I may
+go and come where others may not, and see and hear things which your
+Lordship may wish to know. Does your Lordship take me?"
+
+He laughed and rose and clapped me on the shoulder.
+
+"You may call the guard now, Captain, and I will turn you over--not to a
+firing squad, but to the tender mercies of our old rascal host who is a
+'trimmer' of the devil's own school. If he tries to screw a penny's pay
+out of you, as he is like to, put him in arrest."
+
+"It is your Lordship's meaning that I should be quartered here?--in this
+house?" I gasped.
+
+"And why not? Ah, my good Captain of Hussars, I have made you my
+honorary aide-de-camp and a member of my family so that I may keep an
+eye on you. _Comprenez-vous?_"
+
+He said it with a laugh and another hearty hand-clap on my shoulder, and
+I would fain take it for a jest. Yet there be playful gibes that hint at
+gibbets; and I may confess to you here, my dears, that I left my Lord's
+presence with the conviction that my acquittal was but a reprieve
+conditioned upon the best of future good behavior. So it took another
+turn of the audacity screw to tune me up for the battle royal with
+Gilbert Stair and the pettifogger, Owen Pengarvin.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+IN WHICH I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE
+
+
+With the house guard for a guide I found my host in a box-like den below
+stairs; a room with a writing-table, two chairs and a great iron
+strong-box for its scanty furnishings.
+
+The old man was sitting at the table when I looked in, his long nose
+buried in a musty parchment deed. The light from the single small window
+was none too good, but it sufficed to help him recognize me at a glance,
+despite the hussar uniform. In a twinkling he put the breadth of the
+oaken table between us, hurled the parchment deed into the open
+strong-box, slammed to the cover and gave a shrill alarm.
+
+"Ho! you devils without, there! Here he is--I have him! Help! Murder!"
+
+The guard, a burly, bearded Darmstädter, turned on his heel and stood at
+attention in the doorway, looking stolidly for his orders, not to the
+shrilling master of the house, but to the man who wore a uniform.
+
+"'Tis naught," I said, speaking in German. "He mistakes me for a
+_rittmeister_ of the rebels. _Verstehen Sie?_"
+
+The soldier saluted, wheeled and vanished; and I sat down to wait till
+the old man's outcry should pause for lack of breath. When my chance
+came, I said:
+
+"Calm yourself, Mr. Stair. You are in no present danger greater than
+that which you may bring upon yourself. Blot out all the past, if you
+please, and consider me now as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family seeking quarters in your house by my Lord's express command."
+
+"Quarters in my house?--ye're a damned rebel spy!" he cried. "I'll
+denounce ye to my Lord for what ye are. Ho! ye rascals, I say!"
+
+"Peace!" I commanded, sternly; "this is but child's folly. No man in the
+British army would arrest me at your behest. Ring the bell and summon
+your factor lawyer. I would have a word or two in private with both of
+you."
+
+He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great
+beads on his wrinkled forehead.
+
+"D' ye--d' ye mean to kill us both?" he gasped.
+
+"Not if I can help it. But some better understanding is needful, and we
+will have it here and now, once for all. Will you ring, or shall I?"
+
+He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him. A grinning
+black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond
+giving the order, I gave it myself.
+
+"Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly. Tell him Mr. Stair
+wants him."
+
+There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came. Being
+but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have
+fled when he saw me. But I caught him by the collar and sent him
+scurrying around the table to keep his master company.
+
+"Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at
+Appleby Hundred some weeks since?" I demanded. "Speak out, and quickly."
+
+'Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap
+blindly in despair.
+
+"You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you," he gritted
+out.
+
+"On your information?"
+
+"On mine and Mr. Stair's."
+
+"Ye lie!" shrieked the miser. "I tell't ye to keep hands off, ye
+bletherin' little deevil, ye!"
+
+"Never mind," said I; "what's done is done. But it must be undone, and
+that swiftly and thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the
+others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to
+contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some
+story that will hold water and lose no time about it. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Seeing he was not to be put to the wall and spitted on the spot, the
+lawyer recovered himself.
+
+"'Tis not the criminal at the bar who dictates terms, Captain Ireton,"
+he said, with his hateful smirk. "You are under sentence of death, and
+that by a court lawful enough in war time."
+
+"You refuse?" I said.
+
+He shrugged.
+
+"Speaking for myself, I shall leave no stone unturned to bring you to
+book, Captain,--when it suits my purpose."
+
+I was loath to go to extremities with either of them; but my bridge of
+glass must be defended at all hazards.
+
+"You would best reconsider, Mr. Pengarvin. At this present moment I am
+of my Lord Cornwallis's military family and I have his confidence. A
+word from me will put you both in arrest as persons whose loyalty in
+times past has been somewhat more than blown upon."
+
+"Bah!" said the pettifogger. "Bluster is a good dog, but Holdfast is the
+better. You can prove nothing, as you well know. Moreover, with your own
+neck in a noose you dare not mess and meddle with other men's affairs."
+
+"Dare not, you say? I'll tell you what I may dare, Master Attorney. If
+you are not disposed to meet me half way in this matter, I shall go to
+my Lord, tell him how I have been cheated out of my estate, declare the
+marriage with Mistress Margery, and see that you get your just deserts.
+And you may rest assured that this soldier-earl will right me, come what
+may."
+
+'Twas a bold stroke, the boldest of any I had made that morning; but I
+was wholly unprepared for its effect upon the lawyer. His rage was like
+that of some venomous little animal, a thing to make an onlooker shudder
+and draw back.
+
+"Never!" he hissed; "never, I say! I'll kill her first--I'll--" He
+choked in the very exuberance of his malignance, and his face was like
+the face of a man in a fit.
+
+'Twas then that I saw the pointing of his villainy and knew what Margery
+had meant when she said that for reasons of his own he was holding my
+betrayal in abeyance. He was Falconnet's successor and my rival. This
+little reptile aspired to be the master of my father's acres and the
+husband of my dear lady! And his holding off from denouncing me at once
+was also explained. Taking it for granted that the wife would bargain
+for the husband's life, he had made a whip of his leniency to flog
+Margery into subjection.
+
+My determination was taken upon the instant. There was no safety for
+Margery whilst this plotting pettifogger was at large, and I stepped to
+the door and called the sentry. The Darmstädter came back and I pointed
+to the lawyer. Then, indeed, the furious little madman found his tongue
+and shrilled out his defiance.
+
+"Curse you!" he yelled. "I'll be quits with you for this, Master Spy!
+'Tis your hearing now, but mine will come, and you shall hang like a
+dog! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth--I'll--"
+
+I made a sign and the soldier brought his musket into play and pricked
+his prisoner with the bayonet in token that time pressed. So we were rid
+of the lawyer in bodily presence, though I could hear his snarlings and
+spittings as the big Darmstädter ran him out at the bayonet's point.
+
+During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood
+apart, watchful but trembling. When we were alone I said:
+
+"Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your
+house, as a member of my Lord's family. Lead on, if you please, and I'll
+follow."
+
+He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad
+stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and
+catching at the balustrade to steady himself as we ascended. The room he
+gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and
+pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or
+a look behind him.
+
+The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in
+suddenly when I set my shoulder to it. There was a quick little cry,
+half of anger, half of affright, from within. I drew back hastily, with
+a muttered curse upon the old man's spite, and in the act my spur caught
+the door and slammed it shut behind me.
+
+For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had
+shown me to my lady's chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off,
+before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS
+
+
+If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my
+lady's flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood
+fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.
+Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like
+air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, "Fie, for shame, Captain
+Ireton!--and you would call yourself a gentleman!" to set me afire with
+prinklings of abashment.
+
+What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to
+let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own
+father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I
+should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run
+away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again,
+and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of
+passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the
+best of us.
+
+"How are you better than the man you warned me of?" she cried. And
+then, in a tempest of grief: "Oh! you would not leave me the respect I
+bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it
+under foot!"
+
+Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this
+unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for
+me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty,
+heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me
+spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded
+wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better
+right to look upon her thus?
+
+So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin
+veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid
+the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which
+lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked
+himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to
+look about him for his mate.
+
+Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may
+stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I
+would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to
+me.... Ah, God! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be
+ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I
+would do.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!" she pleaded. "Think
+what it will mean to you, and how you will loathe me and yourself as
+well when this madness is overpast! Oh, go; go quickly, lest I, too,
+forget--"
+
+And so it was that I found sudden strength to turn and leave her
+kneeling there; turned to grope blindly for the door with all the pains
+of hell aflame within me.
+
+For now I had put honor under foot; now I knew that I had truly earned
+her scorn and loathing. I could no longer plead that I was the puppet of
+fate flung against my will between this maiden and my dear lad. I was
+the wilful offender; false to my love, false to my friend, a recreant to
+every oath wherewith I had bound myself to be true and loyal to these
+two.
+
+With such a flaming sword to drive me forth, I stumbled from the room,
+thinking only how I should quickest rid me of myself. Hastening to my
+garret sleeping-place I buckled on my sword, found my shako, and went
+straight to my Lord's bed-chamber. My rap at the door went unanswered,
+and a broad-shouldered young fellow in a lieutenant's uniform, lounging
+on a settle in the clock landing of the stair, told me Lord Cornwallis
+was gone out.
+
+I was face to face with this young lieutenant before I recognized him;
+being so bent upon haste I should have passed him on the landing without
+a second glance had he not risen to grip me by the shoulders.
+
+"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "is it thus you pass an old friend
+without a word, Captain Ireton?"
+
+'Twas my good death-watch; that Lieutenant Tybee of the light-horse who
+had sunk the British officer in the man in that trying night at Appleby
+Hundred. I returned his hearty greeting as well as I might, and would
+have explained my present state and standing but that I was loath to lie
+to him. But as to this, he saved me the shame of it.
+
+"I could have sworn you were no rebel, Captain Ireton; indeed, I made
+bold to say as much to our colonel, after it was all over. I told him a
+soft word or two would have won you back to your old service. You see I
+knew better than the others what lay beneath all your madnesses that
+night."
+
+"You knew somewhat, but not all," I said; and thereupon, lest he should
+involve me deeper and detain me longer when I was athirst to be gone, I
+hastened to ask where I might hope to find his Lordship and Colonel
+Tarleton.
+
+"'Tis the hour for parade; you will find them at the camp," he replied.
+And then, out of the honest English heart of him: "Have you made your
+peace, Captain? Do you need a friend to go with you?"
+
+I said I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little
+while before; that by my Lord's appointment I was now a sort of honorary
+aide-de-camp.
+
+"Good!" said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince
+for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact. Then he
+roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below: "A mount
+for Captain Ireton--and be swift about it!"
+
+He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the
+talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty
+God-speed. Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor
+return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of
+nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest
+quench the fires of it.
+
+The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little
+changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the
+near-at-hand camp of an armed host. Being but a halt-point _en route_ in
+the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of
+that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.
+
+I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary's quarters and
+making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at
+the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy's use of them.
+Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the
+lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait
+my opportunity.
+
+The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the
+soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in
+many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled
+to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.
+
+At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's
+famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the
+infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October
+sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves
+of steel at the command to halt and port arms.
+
+What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this
+well-trained host, armed--as we were not--with the deadly bayonet, and
+moving as one man at the word of command? Not the bravest home guard or
+militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on
+the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.
+
+Riding presently around the field to be the nearer to the general when
+my time should come, I missed the mark completely. It so chanced that as
+the parade was ended my Lord and his suite were at the extreme right;
+and when the regiments broke ranks I was forced to skirt the entire camp
+to come into the road. By this time those I sought were gone into the
+town, so I must needs turn about and follow, with the thing I had to say
+still unspoken.
+
+I need not drag you back and forth with me on the search I made to find
+Lord Cornwallis again. 'Tis enough to say that after missing him here
+and there, I ran him to earth at the court house, where, it was told
+me, my Lord was sitting in council with his staff officers.
+
+Thinking it worse than useless to try to force my way into the council
+chamber, I waited in the raff of soldiery without, cursing the delay
+which gave my despairing resolution time to cool. When I had closed the
+door of my dear lady's chamber behind me I was resolved to fling myself
+upon that fate which needed but a word from me to make my calling and
+election to a gibbet swift and sure. Had I found my Lord Cornwallis in
+his bed-room the word would have been spoken; but now the iron of
+resolution cooled in spite of me.
+
+'Twas not that I was less willing to pay the price of expiation; that
+must be done in any case. But I had seen the enemy, and all the soldier
+in me rebelled at the thought of dying like a noosed bullock in the
+shambles. Could I but strike that one good blow.
+
+The old court house of our greater Mecklenburg was such as some of you
+may remember; a stout wooden building raised upon brick pillars to leave
+a story underneath. In the time of the British occupation this lower
+story served as a market house, and the public entrance to the court
+room above was reached by steps on the outside. In my boyhood days this
+outer stair was the only one; but now in wandering aimlessly through the
+market-place beneath I found another flight in a corner; the "jury
+stair," they called it, since it provided the means of egress from the
+jury box above.
+
+The sight of this inner stair set me plotting. Could I make use of it to
+come unseen into the council chamber of Lord Cornwallis and his
+officers?
+
+The market-place was well thronged with venders and soldier buyers; the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers were not averse to the turning of an honest
+penny upon the needs of their oppressors, as it seemed. I watched my
+chance, and when there were no prying eyes to mark it, made the dash up
+the steps.
+
+Happily for the success of the adventure there was an angle in the
+narrow stair to hide me whilst I lifted the trap door in the court-room
+floor a scant half-inch and got my bearings. As I had hoped, the trap
+opened behind the jury box, and I was able to raise it cautiously and so
+to draw myself up into the room above, unseen and unheard.
+
+A peep around the corner of the high jury stalls showed me my Lord and
+his suite gathered about the lawyers' table in front of the bar. Of the
+staff I recognized only Stedman, the commissary-general; Tarleton,
+looking something the worse for his late illness; Major Hanger, his
+second in command, and the young Irishman, Lord Rawdon.
+
+At the moment of my espial, Cornwallis was speaking, and I drew back to
+listen, well enough content to be in earshot. For if my good angel had
+timed my coming I could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.
+
+"What we have to consider now is how best to reach Ferguson with an
+express instantly," his Lordship was saying. "This rising of the
+over-mountain men is likely to prove a serious matter--not only for the
+major, but for the king's cause in the two provinces. Lacking positive
+orders to the contrary, Ferguson will fight--we all know that; and if he
+should be defeated 'twill hopelessly undo his work among the border
+loyalists and set us back another twelvemonth."
+
+"Then your Lordship will order him to come in with what he has?" said a
+voice which I knew for Colonel Tarleton's.
+
+"Instanter, had I a sure man to send."
+
+"Pshaw! I can find you a hundred amongst the late royalist recruits."
+'Twas young Lord Rawdon who said this.
+
+"Damn them!" said his Lordship shortly; "I would sooner trust this new
+aide of mine. He comes straight from the major and can find his way back
+again."
+
+Tarleton laughed. "I fear we shall never agree upon him, my Lord. I know
+not how he has made his peace with you, but I do assure you he is as
+great a rascal as ever went unhung. 'Tis true, as you say, I did not go
+into the particulars; but were Captain Stuart or Sir Francis Falconnet
+here, either of them would convince your Lordship in a twinkling."
+
+There was silence for a little space following the colonel's
+denunciation of me, and then my Lord broke it to say: "I may not be so
+credulous as you think, Colonel. Rebel spy or true-blue loyalist, he is
+safe enough for the present. In the meantime in this matter of reaching
+Ferguson we may make good use of him."
+
+"In what manner, your Lordship?" asked one whose voice I did not
+recognize.
+
+"He has come straight from Major Ferguson, as I say; and, loyalist or
+rebel, he can find his way back to Gilbert Town."
+
+"But you'll never be trusting him with despatches!" said Lord Rawdon.
+
+"There is no need to trust him. He can be given the despatches with some
+hint of their purport, and of how much the king's cause will profit by
+their safe delivery."
+
+Again a silence fell upon the group around the lawyers' table, and then
+some one--'twas Major Hanger, as I thought--said: "'Tis an unread riddle
+for me as yet, my Lord."
+
+Cornwallis laughed. "Where are your wits this morning, gentlemen? If he
+be loyal and true, the despatches will go safe enough. If, on the other
+hand, he be a rebel and a spy, he will doubtless tamper with them; but
+in that case he will none the less ride straight enough to Major
+Ferguson's headquarters in the West."
+
+"H'm; your Lordship is still too deep for me," said Tarleton's second in
+command. "If he be a rebel and a spy, why, in God's name, should he
+carry your Lordship's letters to any but some rag-tag colonel of his own
+kidney?"
+
+My Lord laughed again. "Truly, Major, you should go to a dame's school
+and learn diplomacy. If we tell him beforehand what our object is, how
+could any rebel of them all defeat it more surely than by going to
+Ferguson with a garbled message that would make him stand and fight a
+losing battle?"
+
+"But, my Lord--the risk!" cut in the commissary-general.
+
+"There need be none. An hour after he sets out we shall send a mounted
+detail after him with an Indian tracker to nose out his trail. The
+lieutenant in command will carry duplicate despatches. At the worst,
+Ireton will guide these followers to Ferguson's rendezvous; and, so far
+as we know, he is the only man who knows exactly where to find the
+major."
+
+I had heard enough. Under cover of the chorus of bravos raised by Lord
+Cornwallis's explication of his plot within a plot, I lifted the
+trap-door and made my exit as noiselessly as I had come.
+
+Guessing that no time would be lost in putting the plan into action, I
+made haste to be found inquiring hither and yon for the
+commander-in-chief when my Lord and his suite came down the outer stair;
+and when we were met I was quickly told of my assignment to courier
+duty.
+
+"Make your preparations to take the road within the hour, and report to
+me at Friend Stair's," said my Lord, most affably. "We shall put your
+new-found loyalty to the test, Captain Ireton, by entrusting you with a
+most important mission. Go with the commissary-general and he will find
+you your mount and equipment."
+
+Thus dismissed, I went with Stedman, and was accorded a more gentlemanly
+welcome than my overhearings had given me leave to expect.
+
+On the way to the horse paddock the commissary-general told me of his
+plan to write a history of the campaign; a bit of confidence which set
+me laughing inwardly and wondering if he would put one John Ireton,
+sometime of the Scots Blues, and late captain in her Apostolic Majesty's
+Hussars, between the covers of his book. 'Tis small wonder that he did
+not. I have since had the pleasure of reading his history of the great
+war, and I find it curiously lacking in those incidents which did not
+redound to the honor and glory of the king's cause and army in the
+field.
+
+Not to digress, however, my makeshift mount was soon exchanged for a
+better; I was allowed to draw what I would of accoutrements and
+provender from the king's stores; and so, to cut it short, I was
+presently at the door of my Lord's headquarters fully equipped and ready
+for the road.
+
+I did hope in those last few moments that I might have a chance to
+exchange a word with my dear lady; might ask her forgiveness, or,
+failing so much grace of her, might at least have another sight of her
+sweet face.
+
+But even this poor boon was denied me. I was scarce out of the saddle
+when an aide came to conduct me to the general, and I saw no one in the
+house save my Lord himself.
+
+As you would guess, my instructions conformed exactly to the plan
+outlined by Lord Cornwallis in the council. I was entrusted with a
+sealed packet for delivery to Major Ferguson, and, for safety's sake, as
+my Lord explained, I was given the meat of the message to deliver
+verbally should the need arise. Ferguson was to be ordered to come in
+instantly by forced marches, if necessary, and he was on no account to
+risk a battle with the over-mountain men.
+
+You may be sure, my dears, that I scarce drew breath till I was a-horse
+and out of the town and galloping hard on the road to that ford of
+Master Macgowan's which afterward became famous in our history under the
+misspelling "Cowan's Ford." 'Twas too good to be true that I should be
+thrust thus into the very gaping mouth of opportunity, and now and again
+I would feel the packet buttoned tight beneath my hussar jacket to make
+sure 'twas not a dream to vanish at a touch.
+
+In the mad joy of it the spirit of prophecy came upon me, and I saw as
+if the thing were done, how at last I held the fate of the patriot cause
+in all our west country in the hollow of my hand.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+OF WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK
+
+
+Skipping lightly over the happenings of the two days following my
+departure from Charlotte on the king's errand, I may say that after
+passing the British outposts at the crossing of the Catawba, I met
+neither friend nor foe; and from noon on I rode to the westward through
+a pitiless drizzling rain, splashed to the belt with the mire of the
+road, and having little chance to inquire my way.
+
+This last lack grew with the passing hours to the size of a threatening
+hazard. As you may have guessed, I knew no more than a blind man the
+route I should take; knew no more of the whereabouts of Gilbert Town and
+Major Ferguson's rendezvous than that both were some eighty miles to the
+westward.
+
+At the outset I had thought to feel out the way in general by cautious
+inquiry along the road; but when I came to consider of this, the risk of
+betraying my ignorance to those who followed me was too great to let me
+turn aside to any of the wayside houses; and as for chance passers-by,
+there were none--the rain kept all within doors.
+
+So I was constrained to gallop on without pause; and throughout that
+comfortless afternoon and the scarce less miserable day which followed,
+there were no incidents to break the dull monotony of the blind race
+save these two; that once the clouds lifted enough to give me a glimpse
+of my pursuers in a far reach to the eastward; and once again I had a
+sight of an awkward horseman in the road before me--saw him and tried to
+overtake him, and could not, for all his clumsy riding.
+
+Now I was curious about this lone horseman ahead for more reasons than
+one, but chiefly because my glimpse of him seemed to show me the back of
+a man whom I made sure I had left safe behind in the British guard-house
+in Charlotte, to wit: the scoundrelly little pettifogger.
+
+At first I scoffed at the idea. Saying he were free to leave Charlotte,
+how should he be riding post on my haphazard road to the westward? 'Twas
+against all reason, and yet the tittuping figure of which I had but a
+rain-veiled glimpse named itself Owen Pengarvin in spite of all the
+reasons I could bring to bear.
+
+'Twas close on eventide of the second day, the early evening gloaming of
+a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost
+in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would
+seem, from beneath the very hoofs of my horse.
+
+"God save the king!"
+
+The bay shied suddenly, standing with nostrils a-quiver; and I had to
+look closely to make out the little brown dot of humanity clad in russet
+homespun crouching in the path, its childish eyes wide with fear and its
+lips parted to shrill again: "God save the king!"
+
+I threw a stiff leg over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to
+my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the
+sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of
+the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not
+above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might
+have taken as a pattern for one of his seraphs.
+
+"What know you of the king, little one?" I asked.
+
+"Gran'dad told me," she lisped. "If I was to see a soldier-man I must
+say, quick, 'God save the king,' or 'haps he'd eat me. Is--is you
+hungry, Mister Soldier-man?"
+
+"Truly I am that, sweetheart; but I don't eat little maids. Where is
+your grandfather?"
+
+"Ain't got any gran'favver; I said 'gran'_dad_.'"
+
+"Well, your gran'dad, then; can you take me to him?"
+
+"I don't know. 'Haps you'd eat _him_."
+
+"No fear of that, my dear. Do I look as if I ate people?"
+
+She gave me a long scrutiny out of the innocent eyes and then put up two
+little brown hands to be taken. "I tired" she said; and my sore heart
+went warm within me when I took her in my arms and cuddled her. After a
+long-drawn sigh of contentment, she said: "My name Polly; what's yours?"
+
+"You may call me Jack, if you please--Captain Jack, if that comes the
+easier. And now will you let me take you to your gran'dad?"
+
+She nodded, and I spoke to the bay and mounted, still holding her
+closely in my arms.
+
+"Tell me quickly which way to go, Polly," I said; for besides being, as
+I would fear, far out of the way to Gilbert Town, the last hilltop to
+the rear had given me another sight of my shadowing pursuers riding hard
+as if they meant to overtake me.
+
+The little maid sat up straight on the saddle horn and looked about her
+as if to get her bearings.
+
+"That way," she said, pointing short to the right; and I wheeled the
+horse into a blind path that wound in and out among the trees for a long
+half mile, to end at a little clearing on the banks of a small stream.
+
+In the midst of the clearing was a rude log cabin; and in the open
+doorway stood a man bent and aged, a patriarchal figure with white hair
+falling to his shoulders and a snowy beard such as Aaron might have
+worn. At sight of me the old watcher disappeared within the house, but a
+moment later he was out again, fingering the lock of an ancient
+Queen's-arm.
+
+I drew rein quickly, and the little maid sat up and saw the musket.
+
+"Don't shoot, gran'dad!" she cried. "He's Cappy Jack, and he doesn't
+eat folkses."
+
+At this the old man came to meet us, though still with the clumsy musket
+held at the ready.
+
+"These be parlous times, sir," he said, half in apology, I thought. And
+then: "You have made friends with my little maid, and I owe you somewhat
+for bringing her safe home."
+
+"Nay," said I; "the debt is mine, inasmuch as I have the little one for
+my friend. 'Tis long since I have held a trusting child in my arms, I do
+assure you, sir."
+
+He bowed as grandly as any courtier. "I hope her trust is not misplaced,
+sir; though for the matter of that, we have little enough now to take or
+leave."
+
+"You have given it all to the king?" said I, feeling my way as I had
+need to.
+
+His eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly.
+
+"The king has taken all, sir, as you see," this with a wave of the hand
+to point me to the forlorn homestead. "There is naught left me save this
+poor hut and my little maid."
+
+"'Taken,' you say? Then you are not of the king's side?"
+
+He came a step nearer and faced me boldly. "Listen, sir: two of my sons
+were left on the bloody field of Camden, and the butcher Banastre
+Tarleton slew the other two at Fishing Creek. A month since a band of
+roving savages, armed with King George's muskets, mind you, sir, came
+down upon us at Northby, and this little maid's mother--"
+
+He stopped and choked; and the child looked up into my face with her
+blue eyes full of nameless terror. "Oh, I want my mammy!" she said.
+"Won't you find her for me, Cappy Jack?"
+
+I slipped from the saddle, still clasping the little one tightly in my
+arms.
+
+"Enough, sir," I said, when I could trust myself to speak. "This same
+King George's minions have made me a homeless outcast, too. I live but
+to give some counter stroke, if I may."
+
+"Ha!" said the old man, starting back; "then you are for our side? But
+your uniform--"
+
+"Is that of an Austrian officer, my good sir, which I should right
+gladly exchange for the buff and blue, but that I can serve the cause
+better in this."
+
+He dropped the Queen's-arm, took the child from me and bade me welcome
+to his cabin and all it held. But I was not minded to make him a sharer
+in my private peril.
+
+"No," said I. "Tell me how I may find Gilbert Town and Major Ferguson's
+rendezvous, and I will ride whilst I can see the way."
+
+He looked at me narrowly. "Ferguson left Gilbert Town some days since.
+If 'tis the place you seek, you are gone far out of your way; if 'tis
+the man--"
+
+"'Tis the man," I cut in hastily.
+
+The patriarch shook his head.
+
+"If you be of our side, as you say, he will hang you out of hand."
+
+"So I can make my errand good, I care little how soon he hangs me."
+
+"And what may your errand be? Mayhap I can help you."
+
+"It is to bring him to a stand till the mountain men can overtake him."
+
+The old man trembled with excitement like a boy going into his first
+battle.
+
+"Ah, if you could--if you could!" he cried. "But 'tis too late, now.
+Listen: his present camp is but three miles to the westward on Buffalo
+Creek. I was there no longer ago than the Wednesday. I--I made my
+submission to him--curse him--so that I might mayhap learn of his plans.
+He told me all; how that now he was safe; that the mountaineers were
+gone off from the fording of the Broad on a false scent; that Tarleton
+with four hundred of the legion would soon be marching to his relief.
+
+"I stole away when I could, and that night took horse and rode twenty
+miles to Tom Sumter's camp at Flint Hill--all to little purpose, I fear.
+Poor Tom is still desperately sick of his Fishing Creek wounds, and
+Colonel Lacey was the only officer fit to go after Shelby and the
+mountain men to set them straight. I should have gone myself, but--"
+
+"Stay, my good friend," said I; "you go too fast for me. If Ferguson is
+still out of communication with the main at Charlotte, we may halt him
+yet."
+
+The old man made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"'Tis a thing done because it is as good as done. The major will break
+camp and march to-morrow morning, and he can reach Charlotte at ease in
+two days. What with their losing of his trail, the mountain men are
+those same two days behind him."
+
+"None the less, we shall halt him," said I. "Have you ever an inkhorn
+and a quill in your cabin?"
+
+"Both; at your service, sir. But I can not understand--"
+
+"We may call it the little maid's judgment on those who have made her
+fatherless. But for her stopping of me I should have come unprepared
+into the camp of the enemy. I am the bearer of a letter from Lord
+Cornwallis to this same Major Ferguson."
+
+"You?--a bearer of Lord Cornwallis's despatches?" The old man put a
+blade's length between us and held the little one aloft as if he feared
+I might do her a mischief. I laughed and bade him be comforted.
+
+"'Tis a long story, and I may not take the time to tell it now. But a
+word will suffice. Like yourself, I made my submission--and for the same
+purpose. My Lord accepted it and made me his despatch-bearer because he
+thought I knew the way to Ferguson when no one else knew it. But enough
+of this; time presses. Let me have ink and the quill."
+
+The old man led the way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my
+disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet;
+but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the
+paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab
+table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a
+peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding
+by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk engagement with
+the over-mountain men.
+
+How to change such an order to reverse it in effect, I knew no more than
+a yokel; but here again my ancient ally showed himself a man of parts.
+Dressing the pen to make it the fellow of that used by my Lord
+Cornwallis, he scanned the handwriting of the letter closely, made a few
+practice pot-hooks to get the imitative hang of it, and wrote this
+_postscriptum_ at the bottom of the sheet.
+
+    _Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his
+    despatches. Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the
+    legion, will take the road for you to-night. If battle is forced
+    upon you, make a stand and hold the enemy in check till
+    reinforcements come.
+
+    Cornwallis._
+
+The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve.
+'Twas a most beautiful forgery. My Lord's crabbed handwriting was copied
+to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could
+have told which was his own; 'twas the same circle "C," the same
+printing "r," the same heavy precision throughout.
+
+"Capital!" said I. "Now, if the lightning would but strike these
+pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand's turn."
+
+"How?" said the patriarch; "are you followed?"
+
+I told him I was; told him of my Lord's plot within a plot--that three
+light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate
+despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.
+
+At this the old warhorse--I learned afterward that he had fought through
+the French and Indian war--wagged his beard and his eye flashed.
+
+"We must stop them," he said. "Three of them, do you say?"
+
+"Three white men and an Indian trailer."
+
+"Ha! If it were not for the little maid.... Let me think."
+
+He fell to pacing up and down before the fire on the hearth, and I took
+the small one on my knee to let her chatter to me. 'Twas five full
+minutes before my ancient gave me the worth of his cogitations, but when
+he did speak it was much to the purpose.
+
+"These marplot rear-guards of yours will spoil it all if they come to
+Ferguson's camp either before or after you. Do they know the major's
+present whereabouts?"
+
+"No more than I did an hour ago. As I take it, they are depending on me
+to show them the way."
+
+"Well, then; dead men tell no tales."
+
+"But, my good friend, you forget there are four of them and only two of
+us! We should stand little chance with them in fair fight."
+
+Again the old man's eyes snapped and glowed as if pent-fires were behind
+them.
+
+"Was it fair fight when Tarleton's men rode in upon Tom Sumter's rest
+camp at Fishing Creek and cut down this little maid's father whilst he
+was naked and bathing in the stream? Was it fair fight when King
+George's Indian devils came down in the dead of night upon our
+defenseless house at Northby? Never talk to me of fairness, sir, whilst
+all this bloody tyranny is afoot!"
+
+I thought upon it for a little space. 'Twas none so easy to decide. On
+one hand, stern loyalty to the cause I had espoused passed instant
+sentence on these four men whose lives stood in the way; on the other,
+common humanity cried out and called it murder.
+
+Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy
+since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone
+valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out
+of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my
+trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race.
+I could not do it.
+
+"No," said I, firmly. "These followers of mine must be stopped, as you
+say, else there is no need of my going on. But there must be no
+butcher's work."
+
+The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.
+
+"A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take
+another's," quoth he.
+
+"Truly; and I am most willing on both heads. But we have had enough and
+more than enough of midnight massacre."
+
+Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we
+were both waxing warm upon it. But in the midst the little maid came
+running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.
+
+"Injun man!" was all she could say; but that was enough. At a bound I
+reached the door. An Indian was at my horse's head, loosing the halter,
+as I thought. Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara
+was at his back.
+
+Luckily, he had the wit not to move. "No kill Uncanoola," he muttered,
+this without the stirring of a muscle. Then, as if he were talking to
+the horse: "White squaw, she send 'um word; say 'good by.'"
+
+My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.
+
+"Mistress Margery, you mean? Do you come from her?"
+
+"She send 'um word; say 'good by,'" he repeated.
+
+"What else did she say?" I demanded.
+
+"No say anyt'ing else: say 'good by.'" He turned upon me at that and I
+saw why he had kept his face averted. He had on the war paint of a
+Cherokee chief.
+
+"Uncanoola good Chelakee now," he grinned. "Help redcoat soldier find
+Captain Long-knife. Wah!"
+
+I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of
+the thing staggered me. He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of
+the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian
+tracker to lift my trail, 'twas he who had volunteered. But now my
+spirits rose. With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully
+and yet fairly with my rear-guard.
+
+"Where are your masters now?" I asked.
+
+He spat upon the ground. "Catawba chief has no master," he said,
+proudly. "Redcoat pale-faces yonder," pointing back the way I had come.
+"Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe."
+
+"We must take them," said I.
+
+He nodded. "Kill 'um all; take scalp. Wah!"
+
+The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling. But I undertook to
+cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the
+Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable
+battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his
+pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old
+benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.
+
+So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had
+been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen's-arm for a
+weapon. So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out. When the
+night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their
+camp, sparing life as we could.
+
+When all was settled, the old man gave us a supper of his humble fare,
+after which we went into the open again to sit out the hours of waiting.
+The rain had ceased, but the night was cloudy and the darkness a soft
+black veil to shroud the nearest objects. High overhead the autumn wind
+was sighing in the tree-tops, and now and again a sharper gust would
+bring down a pattering volley of lodged rain-drops on the fallen leaves.
+
+Uncanoola sat apart in stoical silence, smoking his long-stemmed pipe.
+The old man and I talked in low tones, or rather he would tell me of his
+past whilst I sat and listened, holding the little maid in my arms.
+
+After a time the child fell asleep, and I craved permission to put her
+in the little crib bed in the chimney corner. The flickering light of
+the fire fell upon her innocent face when I loosed the clasp of the tiny
+hands about my neck and laid her down. Again the wave of softness
+submerged me and I bent to leave a kiss upon the sweet unconscious lips.
+
+Ah, my dears, you may smile again, if you will; but at that moment I had
+a far-off glimpse of the beatitude of fatherhood; I was no longer the
+hard old soldier I have drawn for you; I was but a man, hungering and
+thirsting for the love of a wife and trusting, clinging little children
+like this sweet maid.
+
+I rose, turning my back upon the chimney corner and its holdings with a
+sigh. For now the time was come for action, and I must needs be a man of
+blood and iron again.
+
+Lacking the Catawba to guide us, I doubt if either the old man or I
+could have found my rearguard's bivouac near the trail I had left. But
+Uncanoola led us straight through the pitchy darkness; and when we were
+come upon the three soldiers we found them all asleep around the handful
+of camp-fire.
+
+'Twould have been murder outright to kill them thus; and now I think the
+old patriarch forgot his wrongs and was as merciful as I. But not so the
+Catawba. He had armed himself with a stout war-club, and before I was
+free to stop him he had knocked two of the three sleepers senseless, and
+would have battered out their brains but for the old man's intervention.
+
+As for the officer, I had flung myself upon him in the rush and was
+having a pretty handful of him. But though he was broad in the
+shoulders, and as agile as a cat, he was taken at a sleeping man's
+disadvantage, and so I presently had the better of him.
+
+"Enough, man! 'tis as good as a feast!" he cried, when I had him fast
+pinioned; and thereupon I let him have breath and freedom to sit up. In
+the act he had his first good sight of me, as I had mine of him. 'Twas
+Tybee and no other.
+
+"Gad! my Captain," he said, feeling his throat. "If you have a grip like
+that for your friends, I'm damned glad I'm not your enemy."
+
+"But you are," I rejoined, rather shamefacedly, yet thankful to the
+finger-tips that I had not consented to a massacre. "I am for the
+Congress and the Commonwealth, Lieutenant, and you are my prisoner. May
+I trouble you for the despatches you carry?"
+
+He looked up at me with a queer grimace on his boyish face.
+
+"The devil! but you're a cool hand, Captain Ireton! Whatever you were in
+that coil at Appleby, you've led the spy's long suit this time. And I'm
+not sure whether I like you any the worse for it, if so be you must be a
+rebel." And with that, he gave me the sealed packet and asked what I
+would do with him.
+
+His query set me thinking. As for the two stunned troopers, I meant to
+turn them over to the old man for safe keeping; but I was loath to make
+it harder than need be for this good-natured youngster. So I put him
+upon his honor.
+
+"Do you know what this packet contains?" I asked.
+
+He laughed. "My Lord did not honor me with his confidence. I was to
+follow you in to Major Ferguson's camp, deliver the despatches, and
+vanish."
+
+"Good; then you need tell no lies. When the Indian has fetched my horse,
+I shall ride to Ferguson's camp, and you may ride with me. I shall ask
+no more than this; that you do not fight again till you are exchanged;
+and that you will not tell Major Ferguson whose prisoner you are. Do you
+accept the terms?"
+
+"Gad! I'd be a fool not to. But what's in the wind, Captain? Surely you
+can tell me, now that I am safely out of the running."
+
+"You will know in a day or two; and in the meantime ignorance is your
+best safety. You can tell Major Ferguson that you were waylaid on the
+road by a party of the enemy, and that you were paroled and fell in with
+me."
+
+He looked a little rueful, as a good soldier would, but was disposed to
+make the best of a bad bargain.
+
+"Here's my hand on it," he said; and a little later we had dragged the
+two troopers to the cabin, where the old man became surety for their
+safe keeping, and were feeling our way cautiously westward at the heels
+of the Catawba who had taken his directions from our patriarch.
+
+We pressed forward in silence through the shadowy labyrinth of the wood
+for a time, but at the crossing of a small runlet where we would stop to
+let the horses drink, Tybee burst out a-laughing.
+
+"'Tis as good as a play," he said. "Three several times I've had to
+change my mind about you, Captain Ireton, and I'm not cock-sure I have
+your measure yet. But I'll say this: if you've strung my Lord
+successfully, you'll be the first to do it and come off alive in the
+end."
+
+"The end is not yet, my good friend; and I may not come off better than
+the others," I rejoined. And with that we fared on again till we could
+see the camp-fires of Ferguson's little army twinkling between the tree
+trunks.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+IN WHICH WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER
+
+
+As you may be sure, Major Patrick Ferguson was far too good a soldier to
+leave his camp unguarded on any side, and whilst we were yet a far
+cannon-shot from the glimmering fires a sentry's challenge halted us.
+
+To the man's "Halt! Who goes there?" I gave the word "Friends," salving
+my conscience for the needful lie as I might.
+
+"Advance, friends, and give the countersign."
+
+I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a
+paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken
+to Major Ferguson's headquarters. There was some little cautious
+demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for
+the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field
+commander.
+
+I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it. The little
+army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking
+and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the
+camp-fires of these auxiliaries. But a different air was abroad in the
+camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of
+the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.
+
+Major Ferguson's tent was on a hillock some distance back from the
+stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and
+myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our
+challenging on the sentry line.
+
+Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table,
+transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with
+gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism--the
+disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious
+Scotchman was the inventor.
+
+Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave
+us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only
+when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.
+
+"From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well," was all the answer the
+Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.
+
+Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a
+sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.
+
+"I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing
+despatches"--so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue
+clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence
+than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully
+doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken
+from Tybee.
+
+Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter
+action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg
+at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel
+gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of
+benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much
+more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of
+failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the
+timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was
+reaching for the packet--nay, when he had it in his hand--I started back
+with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous _skir-r-r_ of a
+rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.
+
+In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the
+doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in
+their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing
+moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and
+yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all
+across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my
+plot--and, belike, the plotter as well--was secured and quickly juggled
+into hiding.
+
+"Damme! see now what you've done; you've spilt my breech-charger all
+about the place!" rasped the major, when all was over. And then: "Who
+the devil are ye, anyway; and what do ye want wi' me?"
+
+I clicked my heels, saluted, and gave him the express from my Lord--the
+right one, this time. He tore off the wrapping, swore a hearty soldier
+oath when he read the fore part of the letter and clapped his leg
+joyfully, like the brave gentleman that he was, when he came to the
+_postscriptum_.
+
+"Ye're a fine fellow, Captain; ye've brought me good news," he said;
+then he bade an aide call Captain de Peyster, his second in command, and
+in the same breath gave Tybee and me in charge to an ensign for our
+billeting for the night.
+
+You will conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy
+planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into
+the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the
+huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions
+against hallooing before you are out of the wood. Captain de Peyster was
+come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was
+a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black,
+his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the
+sentries, burst into the tent.
+
+"Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!" he shrieked, pointing at me.
+
+As you would guess, all talk paused at this dramatic interruption, and
+all eyes were turned upon me. Had the little viper been content to rest
+his charge upon the simple accusation, I know not what might have
+happened. But when he got his breath he burst out in a tirade of the
+foulest abuse, cursing me up one side and down the other, and ending in
+a gibbering fit of rage that left him pallid and foaming at the
+lips--and gave me my cue.
+
+"'Tis the little madman of Queensborough," I said, coolly, explaining to
+the bluff major. "His mania takes the form of a curious hatred for me,
+though I know not why. Two days since, he was put in arrest by my Lord's
+authority for threatening my life and that of his master's daughter.
+Now, it would seem, he has broken jail and followed me hither."
+
+"A lunatic, eh? He looks it, every inch," said the major; and the
+blackguard lawyer, hearing my counter accusation, was doing his best to
+give it a savor of likelihood by fighting frantically with the two
+soldiers who had followed him into the tent.
+
+"Out wi' him!" commanded the major. "We've no time to foolish away wi' a
+Bedlamite. Take him away and peg him out, and gi' him a dash o' water to
+cool his head."
+
+Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his
+attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing. So
+he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and
+when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.
+
+Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our
+blankets before one of the camp-fires. But just as I was dropping asleep
+he broke out with, "I would you might tell me what piece of rebel
+villainy this is that I've been a winking accomplice to."
+
+I laughed. "'Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw. And
+surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he's thirsting
+for. Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING
+
+
+The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised
+about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to
+find a strong position. From this it was evident that a battle was
+imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the
+patriots.
+
+From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of
+the situation. A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of
+the over-mountain men of Clark's party and had sent them to the
+settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form--or rather with
+the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of
+an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.
+
+This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted.
+Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the
+Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the
+stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more
+Virginians.
+
+Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other
+scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland,
+Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as
+the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers.
+Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it
+best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army;
+and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a
+pursuit.
+
+From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be
+little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered
+himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis's
+commands to the contrary. In his despatches he was continually urging
+the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a
+sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted
+enemy. But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him
+turned whatever scale there was to turn. He had now with him some eleven
+hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had
+every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the
+night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major
+Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.
+
+For his battle-ground Major Ferguson chose the top of a forest-covered
+hill, the last and lowest elevation in the spur named that day King's
+Mountain.
+
+In some respects the position was all that could be desired. There was
+room on the flat hilltop for an orderly disposition of the fighting
+force; and the slopes in front and rear were steep enough to give an
+attacking enemy a sharp climb. Moreover, there was a plentiful
+outcropping of stone on the summit, scantiest on the broad or outer end
+of the hill, and this was so disposed as to form a natural breastwork
+for the defenders.
+
+But there were disadvantages also, the chief of these being the heavy
+wooding of the slopes to screen the advance of the assaulting party; and
+while the major was busy making his dispositions for the fight, I was on
+tenter-hooks for fear he would have the trees felled to belt the
+breastwork with a clear space.
+
+He did not do it, being restrained, as I afterward learned, by his
+uncertainty as to whether or no the mountain men had cannon. Against
+artillery posted on the neighboring hillocks the trees were his best
+defense, and so he left them standing.
+
+As you would suppose, my situation was now become most trying, and poor
+Tybee's was scarcely less so. Knowing my name and circumstance, and
+having, moreover, a high regard for my old field-marshal's genius, Major
+Ferguson was very willing to make use of my experience. These askings
+from one whom I knew for a brave and honorable gentleman let me fall
+between two stools. As a patriot spy, it was my duty to turn the major's
+confidence as a weapon against him. But as an officer and a gentleman I
+could by no means descend to such depths of perfidy.
+
+In this dilemma I sought to steer a middle course, saying that I must
+beg exemption because my long hard ride had re-opened my old sword
+wound--as indeed it had. So the major generously let me be, thus heaping
+coals of fire upon my head; and I kept out of his way, consorting with
+Tybee, who, like myself, must be an onlooker in the coming fray.
+
+As for the lieutenant, he was all agog to learn more than I dared tell
+him, and it irked him most nettlesomely to have a fight in prospect in
+the which he was in honor bound not to take a hand. Time and again he
+begged me to release him from his parole; and when I would not, he was
+for fighting me a duel with his freedom for a stake.
+
+"Consider of it, Captain Ireton," he pleaded. "For God's sake, put
+yourself in my place. Here am I, in the camp of my friends, gagged and
+bound by my word to you whilst your infernal plot, whatever it may be,
+works out to the _coup de grâce_. Ye gods! it would have been far more
+merciful had you run me through in our wrestling match last night!"
+
+"Mayhap," said I, curtly. "'Twas but the choice between two evils.
+Nevertheless, in time to come I hope you may conclude that this is the
+lesser of the two."
+
+"No, I'm damned if I shall!" he retorted, fuming like a disappointed
+boy, and minding me most forcibly of my hot-headed Richard Jennifer. And
+then he would repeat: "I thought you were my friend."
+
+"So I am, as man to man. But this matter concerns the welfare of a cause
+to which I have sworn fealty. Take your own words back, my lad, and put
+yourself in my place. Can I do less than hold you to your pledge?"
+
+"No, I suppose not," he would say, grumpily. "Yet 'tis hard; most
+devilish hard!"
+
+"'Tis the fortune of war. Another day the shoe may be upon the other
+foot."
+
+The baggage wagons had been massed across the broad end of the hill to
+eke out the stone breastwork, and the last of these arguing colloquies
+took place beneath one of the wagons whither we had crept for shelter
+from the rain, which was now pouring again. In the midst of our talk,
+Major Ferguson dived to share our shelter, dripping like a water
+spaniel.
+
+"Ha! ye're carpet soldiers, both of ye!" he snorted, and then he began
+to swear piteously at the rain.
+
+"'Twill be worse for the enemy than for us," said Tybee. "We can at
+least keep our powder dry."
+
+"Damn the enemy!" quoth the major, cheerfully. "So the weather does not
+put the creeks up and hold Tarleton and Major Gibbs back from us, 'tis a
+small matter whether the rebels' powder be dry or soaked."
+
+"You have made all your dispositions, Major?" Tybee asked.
+
+The major nodded. "All in apple-pie order, no thanks to either of ye.
+'Tis a strong position, this, eh, Captain Ireton? I'm thinking not all
+the rebel banditti out of hell will drive us from it."
+
+"'Tis good enough," I agreed; and here the talk was broken off by the
+major's diving out to berate some of his Tory militiamen who were
+preparing to make a night of it with a jug of their vile country liquor.
+
+The rain continued all that Friday night and well on into the forenoon
+of the Saturday. During this interval we waited with scouts out for the
+upcoming of the mountain men. At noon Major Ferguson sent a final
+express to Lord Cornwallis, urging the hurrying on of the
+reinforcements, not knowing that his former despatch had been
+intercepted, nor that Tarleton had not as yet started to the rescue. A
+little later the scouts began to come in one by one with news of the
+approaching riflemen.
+
+There was but a small body of them, not above a thousand men in all, so
+the spies said, and my heart misgave me. They were without cannon and
+they lacked bayonets; and moreover, when all was said, they were but
+militia, all untried save in border warfare with the Indians. Could they
+successfully assault the fortified camp whose defenders--thanks to the
+major's ingenuity--had fitted butcher-knives to the muzzles of their
+guns in lieu of bayonets? Nay, rather would they have the courage to
+try?
+
+'Twas late in the afternoon before these questions were answered. The
+rain had ceased, and the chill October sunlight filtered aslant through
+the trees. With the clearing skies a cold wind had sprung up, and on the
+hilltop the men cowered behind the rock breastwork and waited in
+strained silence. At the last moment Major Ferguson sent Captain de
+Peyster to me with the request that I take command of the Tory force set
+apart to defend the wagon barricade--this if my weariness would permit.
+I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.
+
+"Say no more, Captain," said this generous soldier, when I began some
+lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take
+shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive."
+
+And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick
+Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he
+insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was--and paid the
+penalty.
+
+I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the
+drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry
+from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee
+gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be
+seen, and I stood with him.
+
+"Your friends are running," he said, when there was no reply to the
+opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the
+slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to
+right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.
+
+"I think not," I objected, denying the apparent fact. "They have come
+too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley."
+
+"But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it
+at the top," he insisted.
+
+"That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so;
+here they come!"
+
+At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive
+with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after
+volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the
+dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars
+I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run,
+these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the
+hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting
+encouragements of the leaders--this until their circling line was
+completed.
+
+Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to
+shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began
+to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings
+and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.
+
+The effect of this fine-bead target practice--for it was naught
+else--was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear,
+crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all
+abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end
+of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was
+appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed
+commands of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging
+his men up to still closer quarters. "A little nearer, my brave boys; a
+little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as
+good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"
+
+You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought
+as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them
+did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them
+witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight
+for fear's sake.
+
+And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous
+in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and
+there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew
+thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but
+it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of
+the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster,
+too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's
+Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de
+Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen
+some little way down the slope.
+
+But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little
+circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the
+wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what
+was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must
+picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose
+upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage
+ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of
+"God save the king!" yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in
+homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front
+and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a hell set free, with no
+quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
+wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
+dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.
+
+In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
+coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
+with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
+work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
+and let me die a soldier's death.
+
+So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
+fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
+of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving
+as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently
+down into the valley of shadows.
+
+And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying
+Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon
+between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I
+heard the crack of the Deckard, the _zip_ of the bullet singing at my
+ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a
+rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I
+felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another
+time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the butt
+of his rifle--and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him. I saw
+the grapple, sprang to my feet and whipped out my sword.
+
+"Stop!" I commanded; "you have broken your parole, Lieutenant!"
+
+The freed borderer glared from one to the other of us. "Loonies!" he
+yelled; "I'll slaughter the both of ye!" And so he would have done, I
+make no doubt, had we not laid hold of him together and heaved him back
+over the breastwork.
+
+These are but incidents, points of contact where the fray touched us two
+at the wagon barricade. I pass them by with the mention, as I have
+passed by the sterner horrors of that furious killing-time. These last
+are too large for my poor pen. As we could gather in the din and
+tumult, the mountain men rushed again and again to the attack, and as
+often the brave major, or De Peyster, led the bayonet charges that
+pushed them back. Yet in the end the unerring bullet outpressed the
+bayonet; there came a time when flesh and blood could no longer endure
+the death-dealing cross-fire from front and rear.
+
+I saw the end was near when the major ordered the final charge, and
+Captain de Peyster formed his line and led it forward at a double-quick.
+The mountaineers held more than half the hilltop now, and this forlorn
+hope was to try to drive them down the farther slopes. On it went, and I
+could see the men pitch and tumble out of the line until at
+bayonet-reach of the riflemen there were less than a dozen afoot and fit
+to make the push.
+
+De Peyster fought his way back to the wagons, gasping and bloody. Some
+of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely
+wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod
+into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the
+white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat
+it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in his word.
+
+"'Tis no use, Major; there is no more fight left in us! Five minutes
+more of this and we'll be shot down to a man!"
+
+Ferguson's reply was a raging oath broad enough to cover all the enemy
+and his own beaten remnant as well; and then, before a hand could be
+lifted to stay him, he had wheeled his horse and was galloping straight
+for the patriot line at the farther extremity of the hilltop.
+
+What he meant to do will never be known till that great day when all
+secrets shall be revealed. For that furious oath was this brave
+gentleman's last word to us or to any. A dozen bounds, it may be, the
+good charger carried him; then the storm of rifle-bullets beat him from
+the saddle. And so died one of the gallantest officers that ever did an
+unworthy king's work on the field of battle.
+
+I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of
+the British commander. 'Twas little to our credit, but I may not pass it
+over in silence. De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white
+flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer
+and many others. Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once
+more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the
+panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.
+
+"God!" said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line
+with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as
+he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee
+was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when
+I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.
+A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's
+father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de
+Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+VAE VICTIS
+
+
+If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of
+this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more
+on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the
+dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my
+dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the
+victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.
+
+But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your
+mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle
+of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with
+the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from
+Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought
+somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.
+
+Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many
+of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors
+had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder
+that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful
+counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the
+cord and tree.
+
+But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian,
+William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay
+and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night,
+made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the
+groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday
+found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.
+
+With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and
+since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching,
+the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard
+for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but
+'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side
+by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just
+before the ending of the battle.
+
+The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready
+fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal
+from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton
+with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the
+mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the
+hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.
+
+As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my
+hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously
+hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.
+
+But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of
+colonels and put to the question.
+
+"Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir," said Isaac Shelby, looking
+me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. "Explain your
+rank and standing, if you please."
+
+I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only
+black looks for my pains.
+
+"'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,--too strange to be believable," quoth
+Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton--of the kind we need not
+cumber ourselves with on a march."
+
+"Who says that word of me?" I demanded, caring not much for that to
+which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.
+
+Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. "Stand out,
+John Whittlesey," he directed; and I found myself face to face with that
+rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at
+the fording of the Catawba.
+
+This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week
+earlier I had passed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this
+though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the
+witness himself, he had misdoubted me all along, but the colonel had
+trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of
+which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he
+confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company
+with me on the road to Charlotte.
+
+I looked from one to another of my judges.
+
+"If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story," I said.
+
+"It is not all," said Shelby. "Mr. Pengarvin, stand forth."
+
+There was another stir in the backgrounding group and the pettifogger
+edged his way into the circle, keeping well out of hand-reach of me. How
+he had made shift to escape from Ferguson's men, to change sides, and to
+turn up thus serenely in the ranks of the over-mountain men, I know not
+to this day, nor ever shall know.
+
+"Tell these gentlemen what you have told me," said Shelby, briefly; and
+the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how
+in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the
+length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen
+Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted
+aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson. Also,
+he suggested that if I should be searched some proof of my duplicity
+might be found upon me.
+
+At this William Campbell nodded to two of his Virginians, and I was
+searched forthwith, and that none too gently. In the breast pocket of my
+hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had
+taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the
+interview with Major Ferguson.
+
+Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around
+among his colleagues.
+
+"I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir," he said to me,
+sternly. "'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it
+sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you
+aught further to say, Captain Ireton?--aught that may excuse us for not
+leaving you behind us in a halter?"
+
+Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely
+the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me?
+Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then
+mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they
+would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down
+here.
+
+'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of
+a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the
+manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same
+bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the
+storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay
+tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim
+Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers;
+the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in
+the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a
+bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.
+
+"Score one for me, Jack!" he cried. "We were fair at t'other end of the
+mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two
+Carolinas who could swear the match of that." Then he whirled upon my
+judges. "What is this, gentlemen?--a court martial? Captain Ireton is my
+friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?"
+
+Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought
+in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as
+the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he
+said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay
+the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just
+found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and
+undelivered. And the tenor of it was precisely opposite to that of an
+order calculated to delay the major's march, as Mr. Jennifer could see
+if he would read it.
+
+While Sevier was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of
+his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about
+with red tape.
+
+"'Pears to me like you Injun-killers from t'other side o' the mounting
+is in a mighty hot sweat to hang somebody," he said, as coolly as if he
+were addressing a mob of underlings. "Here's a mess o' billy-doos with
+Lord Cornwallis's name to 'em that I found 'mongst Major Ferguson's
+leavings. If you'll look 'em over, maybe you'll find out, immejitly _if_
+not sooner, that Cap'n John here is telling ye the plumb truth."
+
+The papers were examined hastily, and presently John Sevier lighted upon
+the despatch I had carried and delivered. Thereat the colonels put their
+heads together; and then my case was re-opened, with Sevier as
+spokesman.
+
+"We have a letter here which appears to be the original order to
+Ferguson, Captain Ireton. Can you repeat from memory the _postscriptum_
+which you say was added to it?"
+
+I gave the gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and
+thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one
+another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng
+that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer to
+wake the echoes.
+
+'Twas while this burst of gratulation was abuzz that Ephraim Yeates
+raised a cry of his own.
+
+"Stop that there black-legged imp o' the law!" he shouted, pushing his
+way out of the circle. "He's the one that ought to hang!"
+
+There was a rush for the wagon barricade, a clatter of horse-hoofs on
+the hillside below, and Yeates's rifle went to his face. But the bullet
+flew wide, and the black-garbed figure clinging to the horse's mane was
+soon out of sight among the trees.
+
+"Ez I allow, ye'd better look out for that yaller-skinned little
+varmint, Cap'n John," quoth the old man, carefully wiping his rifle
+preparatory to reloading it. "He's rank pizen, he is, and ye'll have to
+break his neck sooner 'r later. I 'lowed to save ye the trouble, but old
+Bess got mighty foul yestiddy, with all the shootings and goings on, and
+I hain't got no lead-brush to clean her out."
+
+Now that I was fully exonerated I was free to go and come as I chose;
+nay, more, I was urged to cast in my lot with the over-mountain
+partizans. As to this, I took counsel with Richard Jennifer whilst the
+colonels were setting their commands in order for the march and loading
+the prisoners with the captured guns and ammunition.
+
+"What is to the fore, Dick?" I asked; "more fighting?"
+
+The lad shook his head. "Never another blow, I fear, Jack. These fellows
+crossed the mountain to whip Ferguson. Having done it they will go
+home."
+
+I could not forego a hearty curse upon this worst of all militia
+weaknesses, the disposition to disperse as soon as ever a battle was
+fought.
+
+"'Tis nigh on to a crime," said I. "This victory, smartly followed up,
+might well be the turning of the tide for us."
+
+But the lad would not admit the qualifying condition. "'Twill be no less
+as it is," he declared. "Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the
+cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my
+Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will
+have plenty of time to set himself in motion, slow as he is."
+
+'Twas then I had an inspiration, and I thought upon it for a moment.
+
+"What are your plans, Richard?"
+
+He shook his head. "I have none worth the name."
+
+"Then you are not committed to Colonel Sevier for a term of service?"
+
+"No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be
+fighting hereaway,--Ephraim Yeates and I,--and we came as volunteers."
+
+"Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To
+make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be
+apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the
+news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say. Let us take horse and ride
+post, we two; you to Gates at Hillsborough, and I to Charlotte."
+
+"I had thought of my part of that," he said in a muse. Then he came
+alive to the risk I should run. "But you can't well go back to
+Cornwallis now, Jack: 'tis playing with death. There will be other
+news-carriers--there are sure to be; and a single breath to whisper what
+you have done will hang you higher than Haman."
+
+I shrugged at this. "'Tis but a war hazard."
+
+He looked at me curiously. I saw a shrewd question in his eyes and set
+instant action as a barrier in the way of its asking.
+
+"Let us find Colonel Sevier and beg us the loan of a pair of horses,"
+said I; and so we were kept from coming upon the dangerous ground of
+pointed questions and evasive answers.
+
+Somewhat to my surprise, both Sevier and Shelby fell in at once with our
+project, commending it heartily; and I learned from the lips of that
+courtliest of frontiersmen, "Nolichucky Jack," the real reason for the
+proposed hurried return of the over-mountain men. The Cherokees, never
+to be trusted, had, as it seemed, procured war supplies from the British
+posts to the southward, and were even now on the verge of an uprising.
+By forced marches these hardy borderers hoped to reach their homes in
+time to defend them. Otherwise, as both commanders assured us, they
+would take the field with Gates.
+
+"We have done what we could, Captain Ireton, and not altogether what we
+would," said Sevier in the summing-up. "It remains now for General Gates
+to drive home the wedge we have entered." Then he looked me full in the
+eyes and asked if I thought Horatio Gates would be the man to beetle
+that wedge well into the log.
+
+I made haste to say that I knew little of the general; that I was but a
+prejudiced witness at best, since my father had known and misliked the
+man in Braddock's ill-fated campaign against the French in '55. But
+Richard spoke his mind more freely.
+
+"'Tis not in the man at this pass, Colonel Sevier," he would say; "not
+after Camden. I know our Carolinians as well as any, and they will never
+stand a second time under a defeated leader. If General Washington would
+send us some one else; or, best of all, if he would but come himself--"
+
+"George Washington; ah, there is a man, indeed," said Sevier, his
+dark-blue eyes lighting up. "Whilst he lives, there is always a good
+hope. But we must be doing, gentlemen, and so must you. God speed you
+both. Our compliments to General Gates, Mr. Jennifer; and you may tell
+him what I have told you--that but for our redskin threateners we should
+right gladly join him. As for Lord Cornwallis, you, Captain Ireton, will
+know best what to say to him. I pray God you may say it and come off
+alive to tell us how he took it."
+
+We made our acknowledgments; and when I had bespoken good care for
+Tybee, we took leave of these stout fighters, and of old Ephraim as
+well, since the borderer was to serve as a guide for the over-mountain
+men, at least till they were come upon familiar ground to the westward.
+
+'Twas now hard upon ten of the clock in the forenoon, and we had our
+last sight of the brave little army whilst it was wending its way slowly
+down the slopes of King's Mountain. Of what became of it; how its weary
+march dragged on from day to day; how it was hampered by the train of
+captives, halted by rain-swollen torrents, and was well-nigh starved
+withal; of all these things you may read elsewhere. But now you must
+ride with Richard Jennifer and me, and our way lay to the eastward.
+
+All that Sunday we pressed forward, hasting as we could through the
+stark columned aisles of the autumn-stripped forest, and looking hourly
+to come upon Tarleton's legion marching out to Ferguson's relief.
+
+Since Richard Jennifer had ridden to the hounds in all this middle
+ground from boyhood, we were able to take my blind wanderings in reverse
+as the arrow flies; and by nightfall we were well down upon the main
+traveled road leading to Beattie's fording of the Catawba.
+
+As your map will show you, this was taking me somewhat out of my way to
+the northward; but it was Richard's most direct route to Salisbury and
+beyond, and by veering thus we made the surer of missing Colonel
+Tarleton, who, as we thought, would likely cross the river at the lower
+ford.
+
+Once in the high road we pushed on briskly for the river, nor did we
+draw rein until the sweating beasts were picking their way in the
+darkness down the last of the hills which sentinel the Catawba to the
+westward.
+
+At the foot of this hill a by-road led to Macgowan's ford some six miles
+farther down the river, and here, as I supposed, our ways would lie
+apart. But when we came to the forking of the road, Richard pulled his
+mount into the by-path, clapping the spurs to the tired horse so that
+we were a good mile beyond the forking before I could overtake him.
+
+"How now, lad?" said I, when I had run him down. "Would you take a
+fighting hazard when you need not? There is sure to be a British patrol
+at the lower ford."
+
+He jerked his beast down to a walk and we rode in silence side by side
+for a full minute before he said gruffly: "You'd never find the way
+alone."
+
+I laughed. "Barring myself, you are the clumsiest of evaders, Dick. I am
+on my own ground here, and that you know as well as I."
+
+"Damn you!" he gritted between his teeth. "When we are coming near
+Appleby Hundred you are fierce enough to be rid of me."
+
+I saw his drift at that: how he would take all the chance of capture and
+a spy's rope for the sake of passing within a mile of Mistress Margery,
+or of the house he thought she was in.
+
+"Go back, Dick, whilst you may," said I. "She is not at Appleby
+Hundred."
+
+He turned upon me like a lion at bay.
+
+"What have you done with her?"
+
+"Peace, you foolish boy. I am not her keeper. Her father took her to
+Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home."
+
+He reined up short in the narrow way. "So?" he said, most bitingly. "And
+that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with
+the one to Gates. By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change rôles here
+and now!"
+
+Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing. Here was a man who
+had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling
+for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman
+might.
+
+And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say: "You think I am
+standing in your way, Richard Jennifer? Well, so I am; for whilst I live
+you may not have her. Why don't you draw and cut me down?"
+
+'Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.
+
+"On guard!" he cried; "draw and defend yourself!" and with that the
+great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.
+
+What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time
+to parry the descending blow. But at the balancing instant the
+brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the
+death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would,
+with her husband's blood upon his head.
+
+So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came
+down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees' hive buzzing
+in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side. My
+head was on Richard's knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his
+soaked kerchief.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+HOW I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE
+
+
+You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that
+the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke
+out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain
+me outright.
+
+"I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite," he would say. "The devil
+whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse
+to thrust me out of the way. And when I saw you would not stir, 'twas
+too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade. Oh, God help me!
+I'll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me
+to hell again."
+
+"Nay," said I; "no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard. We are but
+two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us. But you
+need not fight me for it. The love is yours--not mine."
+
+"Don't say that, Jack; I'm selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is
+not. I know whereof I speak."
+
+"No," I denied, struggling to my feet; "it has been yours from the
+first, Dick. I am but a sorry interloper."
+
+For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me
+stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the
+effects of the blow, he went on.
+
+"I say I know, and I do, Jack. She has refused me again."
+
+I groaned in spirit. I knew it must have come to that. Yet I would ask
+when and where.
+
+"'Twas on our last day's riding," he went on; "after we had had your
+note saying you would undertake a mission for Colonel Davie."
+
+I took two steps and groped for the horse's bridle rein.
+
+"Did she tell you why she must refuse you?"
+
+He helped me find the rein for my hand and the stirrup for my foot.
+
+"There was no 'why' but the one--she does not love me."
+
+"But I say she does, Dick; and I, too, know whereof I speak."
+
+He flung me into the saddle as a strong man might toss a boy, and I
+understood how that saying of mine had gone into his blood.
+
+"Then there must be some barrier that I know not of," he said. Whereupon
+he put hand to head as one who tries to remember. "Stay; did you not say
+there was a barrier, Jack?--when we were wrestling with death in the
+Indian fires? Or did I dream it?"
+
+"You did not dream it. But you were telling me what she said."
+
+"Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if
+my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she
+gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart
+would burst."
+
+I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was
+up and we were moving on. Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier,
+Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once
+for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?"
+
+"Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool
+and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you
+with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have
+her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood
+there is in the heart at such times."
+
+We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of
+the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning,
+saying, whilst we let the horses drink: "'Tis patrolled on the other
+bank, you say?"
+
+"It was when I passed it a few days agone."
+
+"Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk
+you need not take--to have me with you."
+
+But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if
+there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for
+Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:
+
+"No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a
+second blade to see you safe through."
+
+"And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no
+doubt it will?"
+
+I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I
+should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the
+pinch."
+
+He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.
+
+"By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you
+carry, Jack Ireton!"
+
+"Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my
+friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on."
+
+"But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming
+peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters."
+
+"If I am recognized--yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the
+outpost need not betray me."
+
+At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now
+since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our
+history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you:
+namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a
+muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in
+mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on
+the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord
+Cornwallis got entangled some months later--but I must not anticipate.
+
+We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in
+the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of
+the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster,
+and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the
+steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that
+our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must
+make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long
+before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.
+
+"What for it, then?" he asked, impatiently. "My courage is freezing
+whilst we wait."
+
+"There is nothing for it but to hold straight on across," I said.
+
+"That we can not; 'twill be over the horses' ears. The beasts will drown
+themselves and us as well."
+
+How we should have argued it out I do not know, for just then Jennifer's
+horse, scenting the troop mounts on the farther shore, cocked tail and
+ears, let out a squealing neigh, and fell to curveting and plunging in a
+racket that might have stood for the splashings of an advancing army.
+
+In a twinkling the outpost camp was astir and a bellowing hail came to
+us across the water. Having no answer, the troopers began to let off
+their pieces haphazard in the darkness; and with the singing _zip_ of
+the first musket ball, Richard went battle-mad, as he always did in the
+face of danger.
+
+"At them!" he thundered, clapping spurs to his jaded beast and whipping
+out the great claymore; and so we charged, the forlornest hope that ever
+fell upon an enemy.
+
+How we came ashore alive through the gun-fire is one of those mysteries
+to which every battle adds its quota; but the poor beasts we rode were
+not so lucky. Jennifer's horse went down while we were yet some yards
+from the bank; and mine fell a moment later. To face a score of waiting
+enemies afoot was too much for even Richard's rash courage; so when we
+were free of the struggling horses we promptly dove for shelter under
+the up-stream bank.
+
+Here the darkness stood our friend; and when the redcoat troopers came
+down to the river's edge with torches to see what had become of us, we
+took advantage of the noise they made and stole away up-stream till a
+shelving beach gave us leave to climb to the valley level above.
+
+Richard shook himself like a water-soaked spaniel and laughed grimly.
+
+"Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to
+death," he commented. "What next?"
+
+I made him a bow. "You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain
+Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm
+a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house
+and see what we can discover."
+
+He entered at once into the spirit of the jest, and together we trudged
+the scant mile through the stubble-fields to my old roof-tree. As you
+would guess, we looked to find the manor house turned into an outpost
+headquarters; but now we were desperate enough to face anything.
+
+Howbeit, not to rush blindly into the jaws of a trap, we first routed
+out the old black majordomo at the negro quarters; and when we learned
+from him that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and
+had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more;
+when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and
+grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's
+laying in.
+
+"A toast!" cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet
+with the glass held high. "To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may
+she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another,
+Jack Ireton!"
+
+We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like
+two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one
+of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught
+whilst that first one lived.
+
+You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short
+hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress
+Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart
+the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting
+of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last
+loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for
+what must come--and so it did, though not as I prefigured.
+
+We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began
+to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned
+down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby
+Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and
+two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be
+Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the
+spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a
+mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.
+
+His last word to me was one of generous caution.
+
+"Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There
+will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and
+you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to
+betray you."
+
+"Trust me," said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward,
+and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set
+abuzz in the small hours of the night.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+IN WHICH MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS
+
+
+Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in
+decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with
+nothing like the welcome at the outpost camp that a king's courier had a
+right to expect.
+
+The captain in command was not the one who had passed me out. He was a
+surly brute of the Yorkshire breed; and when he had heard that I was an
+express rider from Major Ferguson, he was pleased to demand my papers.
+
+To this I must needs make answer that I carried no written despatches;
+that my news was for the commander-in-chief's private ear. This I told
+my Yorkshire pig, demanding to be sent, under guard if he chose, to the
+headquarters in Charlotte.
+
+But Captain Nobbut would hear to no such reasonable proposal. On the
+contrary, he would hold me in arrest till he could report me and have
+instructions from his colonel.
+
+Knowing what a stake it was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in
+durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper
+who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of
+Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed
+with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling
+back with an order to set me forthwith upon the road to headquarters.
+
+Once free of the camp of detention you may be sure I put Blackstar to
+his best paces; but hasten as I would it was coming on to evening when I
+passed the inner safety line and galloped down the high street of the
+town.
+
+As luck would have it, the first familiar face I saw was that of Charles
+Stedman, the commissary-general. On my inquiry he directed me straight.
+
+"My Lord is at supper at Mr. Stair's. Have you news, Captain?"
+
+I drew breath of relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the
+bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying
+that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None
+the less, if the commissary-general were pleased to come with me--
+
+He took the hint at once; and he it was who procured me instant
+admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of
+breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.
+
+I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my
+Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor
+of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great
+silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well
+filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military
+family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as
+befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.
+
+At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's
+sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's
+radiant beauty.
+
+"How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?"
+
+I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.
+
+"I do, my Lord."
+
+"Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new
+loyalist levies, I hope?"
+
+I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.
+
+"May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord," I
+said, quietly.
+
+Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it
+had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded
+on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse
+alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have
+been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but
+above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot
+where my lady sat.
+
+"How is this, sir?--explain yourself!" thundered my Lord, forgetting
+for once his mild suavity.
+
+"'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the
+telling," I replied. "I came upon the major some miles this side of the
+crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with
+his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight,
+he obeyed."
+
+"My command?--but I gave him no such order!"
+
+"Nay, truly, you did not--neither in the original nor in the duplicate,
+my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the
+duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our
+purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made
+his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men."
+
+For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord
+quelled the fierce outburst with a word.
+
+"Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this
+traitor," he said. And then to me: "Go on, sir, if you please; there has
+been a battle, as I take it?"
+
+"There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of
+the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or
+dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the
+field was a prisoner."
+
+Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the
+little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking
+momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords
+aside.
+
+"Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton," he said.
+"You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make
+it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your
+submission to me?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"And you have been a rebel from the first?"
+
+I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.
+
+"I have, my Lord--since the day nine years agone when I learned that
+your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation."
+
+"Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the
+western mountains?"
+
+"Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of
+powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others
+followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to
+report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo."
+
+"And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?"
+
+"I do so hope and trust, my Lord."
+
+He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell
+upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to
+break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for,
+bent like a withe and would not snap.
+
+"Put this spy in irons and clear the room," he ordered sharply. And
+this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to
+the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two
+sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word
+which should efface me.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA
+
+
+Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant
+bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs
+where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted
+guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.
+
+The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the
+door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had
+hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the
+consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a
+pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.
+
+I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who
+was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started
+up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the
+mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a
+candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them
+down.
+
+I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering
+that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my
+latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank
+gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs--which, by the by, were
+strangely bitter.
+
+I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came
+again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make
+no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my
+tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.
+
+When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting
+sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the
+oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through
+that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then
+I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis,
+that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof
+windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were
+throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.
+
+Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel,
+I sprang up quickly--and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the
+pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the
+headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman
+in his first gale at sea.
+
+The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a
+sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the
+cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage
+of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill,
+fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen.
+I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too
+petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had
+bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a
+Turkish cursing--the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants
+the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.
+
+It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that
+the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps
+tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and
+tender asked: "Are you awake, Monsieur John?"
+
+I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with
+the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid
+enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that
+I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.
+
+"_Merci, Monsieur_," she said, icily. And then: "Gratitude does not seem
+to be amongst your gifts."
+
+At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.
+
+"Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful
+for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some
+one must needs spoil me of that!"
+
+"Selfish--selfish always and to the last," she murmured. "Do you never
+give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?"
+
+This was past all endurance.
+
+"If I had not, should I be here this moment?" I raved. "You do make me
+sicker than I was, my lady."
+
+"Yet I say you are selfish," she insisted. "What have I done that you
+should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?"
+
+"Let us have plain speech, in God's name," I retorted. "You know well
+enough there was no better way in which I could serve you."
+
+"Do I, indeed, _mon ami_?" she flashed out. "Let me tell you, sir, had
+she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair--or Margery Ireton, if
+you like that better--would kill you with her own hand rather than have
+it said her husband died upon a gallows!"
+
+A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.
+
+"God in Heaven!" I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned
+me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"
+
+She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.
+
+"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you
+are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."
+
+"But you do not deny it!" I cried.
+
+"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die
+shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice
+in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"
+
+"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?"
+
+"Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I
+said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet."
+
+"Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by
+inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are
+having your revenge of me."
+
+"_Merci, encore._ Shall I go away and leave you?"
+
+"No, not that." A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish
+horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I
+added: "But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing
+me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that."
+
+All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my
+throbbing temples.
+
+"Poor Monsieur John!" she said softly; "I meant not to make you suffer
+more, but rather less." Then she found water and a napkin to wring out
+and bind upon my aching head.
+
+At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the
+love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she
+had brought me to this.
+
+"Ah, that is better--better," I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my
+temples gave me some surcease of the agony.
+
+"Then you forgive me?" she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I
+could not tell.
+
+"There is none so much to forgive," I replied. "One hopeless day last
+summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you--in common justice you
+have the right to do what you will with it."
+
+"Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing
+sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you
+than for me."
+
+"I know it," said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must
+grind upon her. "But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps
+in to break the bond."
+
+Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.
+
+"Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as
+heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me
+see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out
+who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all."
+
+But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt
+more like a man and less like a baited bear.
+
+"That is better," said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my
+Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of
+a man who was never minded to run away."
+
+"But you are going to run away," she said, decisively; "and that as
+soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I
+bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not
+poison you this time."
+
+"Stay," I cried. "You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a
+needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can
+find me."
+
+She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.
+
+"No; you are a soldier, and--and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you
+hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the
+battle-field." And with that she left me.
+
+I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned
+to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit,
+Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my
+nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly
+from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the
+English.
+
+And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer
+any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on
+beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me
+how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over
+me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret,"
+she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it."
+
+But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I
+learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis
+had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army
+would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.
+
+"Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has
+begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he
+had not guessed."
+
+On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.
+
+"You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter."
+
+"True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in
+all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam."
+
+Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the
+blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.
+
+"How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst
+out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me
+presently, for good and all."
+
+"Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning
+for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to
+death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling
+us both, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you
+kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open--if you will but
+drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs."
+
+"Oh, yes--a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another
+lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir,
+if you have not."
+
+"Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well
+enough to hang."
+
+"And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before,
+you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton."
+
+I closed my eyes in very weariness.
+
+"You are hard to please, my lady."
+
+"You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away--to-night."
+
+"Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"
+
+"My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As
+Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and
+in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends."
+
+She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the
+last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.
+
+"Stay a moment," I begged. "You are leaving the untangling of this coil
+you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought
+that the Church can undo what the Church has done?"
+
+Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.
+
+"You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all
+else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed;
+then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face
+in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing
+nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the
+wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END
+
+
+It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at
+the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot
+Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to
+listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order
+announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's
+headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the
+Carolinas.
+
+As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer
+and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander;
+and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene,
+the "Hickory Quaker."
+
+Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general
+to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that
+you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first
+inspection of Horatio Gates's poor "shadow of an army" on that dismal
+December day in Charlotte.
+
+In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man,
+pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his
+waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse
+more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and
+arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.
+
+The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his
+face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose
+and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet
+there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful
+and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of
+openness that a dark man is like to miss.
+
+A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my
+summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more
+prophetic eye.
+
+"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at
+the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our
+colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way--a heat at a time, and a blow
+at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.
+
+Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line
+rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and
+choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his
+men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field,
+in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with
+fringings of the same--a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no
+tailor-fine coat could have set it off.
+
+When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater
+pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath,
+that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the
+Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed
+the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in
+open defiance of all discipline.
+
+Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the
+"Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even
+as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways
+and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but
+psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other
+Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel
+the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse,
+out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.
+
+Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of
+light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and
+file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, "the
+Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the
+luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For
+surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler
+patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was
+our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.
+
+But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing
+restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of
+Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop
+to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you
+turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this
+tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.
+
+As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of
+door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British
+gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.
+
+Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my
+dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British
+general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good
+fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's
+command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.
+
+Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of
+action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's
+company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his
+stirrup and share his hazards.
+
+Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks
+preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to
+take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the
+gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages
+of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale,
+and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the
+dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and
+outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who
+was enamored of death.
+
+As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither
+better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the
+skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or
+that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at
+me day and night.
+
+Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I
+was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days
+lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for
+the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the
+more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at
+each remembrance of the hand that gave them.
+
+One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we
+were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the
+half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the
+caretaker of the deserted town house.
+
+As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and
+the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation
+I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra
+massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de
+house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night;
+yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into
+another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen
+woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made
+her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late
+surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking
+to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her
+to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.
+
+I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do
+think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these
+tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving
+because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.
+For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which
+would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of
+the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire
+to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate
+should open for me.
+
+'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her--the desire and another
+thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come,
+and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut
+into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at
+Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with
+Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of
+my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.
+
+As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate,
+drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and
+outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of
+them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As
+I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now
+waiting to sprout and grow.
+
+It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the
+British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had
+my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.
+
+Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without
+telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive
+me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I
+woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian
+scalping-knife thrust through it.
+
+Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most
+palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.
+
+"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily:
+"'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."
+
+At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he
+would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the
+point.
+
+    _Monsieur:
+
+    "When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had
+    done. I have spoken to the good Père Matthieu, and he has consented
+    to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he
+    should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own
+    seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Père
+    Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."_
+
+That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through
+twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.
+
+"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him
+off no longer.
+
+"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in
+his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"
+
+"'Tis about--it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I,
+equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course
+you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress
+re-established my right and title to the estate?"
+
+"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"
+
+"About a matter touching it, as I say."
+
+"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat
+between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily
+at the back of it.
+
+When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying.
+He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.
+
+"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but
+half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."
+
+"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep
+down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled
+in me.
+
+"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that
+you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."
+
+"Well? And if I do chance to see her--what then?"
+
+"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of
+me."
+
+"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the
+lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save--"
+
+"Save what?" he broke in savagely.
+
+I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of
+waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.
+
+"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us
+have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go
+with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the
+spying."
+
+"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."
+
+I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have
+the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I
+can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick,
+and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her
+will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine.
+Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show
+you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."
+
+So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and
+mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for
+Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the
+year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT
+
+
+'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the
+Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between
+that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and
+I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise,
+cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which
+we had at the house of one Philbrick--as hot a Tory as we pretended to
+be.
+
+From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British
+outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were
+rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General
+Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would
+presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.
+
+"Has Cornwallis lost his wits?" Dick would say, when we were a-jog on
+the southward road again. "'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit
+for being--if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him
+and cut him off from his line and base."
+
+I laughed. "You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens
+that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be
+true, we have heard only the half of it."
+
+"And the other half will be?--"
+
+"That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one
+or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them."
+
+Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: "'Twill
+be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the
+Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws."
+
+"Right you are," said I. "And now we know what we have to discover."
+
+"Anan?" he queried.
+
+"We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan,
+and when."
+
+"That should be easy--if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us
+at a rope's end."
+
+"We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work
+together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must
+pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of
+the road."
+
+"Good," said he; and then his jaw dropped. "But what if one of us be
+taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!"
+
+"I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it
+before we go a step farther, if you please."
+
+"'Tis out of all reason," he demurred.
+
+"'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant
+venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing
+most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty
+higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John
+Ireton."
+
+At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal
+jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.
+
+"'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me," he grumbled. "The risk is
+chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to
+God knows how many more of them, and belike--"
+
+The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen
+galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put
+sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a
+loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit
+Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from "hornets'-nest" Mecklenburg, also
+bent upon revenge.
+
+The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But
+we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog
+himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as
+prisoners.
+
+A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely
+through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight
+of our goal.
+
+Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared
+less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the
+village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and
+measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord
+Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen
+it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business
+of the moment.
+
+"Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack--I'm new to
+this game--what's to do first when we are among them?"
+
+I laughed at him. "You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis
+for you to make the dispositions."
+
+"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."
+
+"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as
+travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and
+this is what we did.
+
+The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted
+over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was
+a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing
+soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard
+and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner,
+with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment
+as the hostelry afforded.
+
+"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he
+might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.
+
+I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal
+telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel
+to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp
+confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if
+I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to
+serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn
+nothing here."
+
+"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was
+something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to
+whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"
+
+I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's
+weaknesses.
+
+"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the
+dead come back to life?"
+
+"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the
+dominies."
+
+"Then I have seen a ghost--a most horrible mask of a man we both know to
+our cost."
+
+"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."
+
+"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man
+himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the
+word.
+
+"No!" said I.
+
+"I tell you yes."
+
+I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into
+the chair.
+
+"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take
+precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I
+have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live--as he
+is."
+
+"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged, thinking of that
+midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her
+knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if
+you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."
+
+But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw
+farthest and clearest.
+
+"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan
+Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a
+supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits
+at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods!
+but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!"
+
+I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the
+sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This
+reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly.
+What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he
+might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless
+kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance,
+how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we
+both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back
+to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.
+
+"To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make
+shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house," I
+said.
+
+"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done--for
+two plain country gentlemen."
+
+"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the
+throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."
+
+Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
+
+"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish
+me outright."
+
+A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded
+hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the
+camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as
+large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within,
+lights and music and sounds of revelry.
+
+"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of
+substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the
+dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these
+cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
+
+I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the
+hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a
+sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and
+passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
+
+
+For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a
+sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us
+into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus
+early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
+
+As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling
+jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes,
+neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina
+plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of
+the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our
+American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on
+their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering
+silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled _coiffures_, paint, patches and
+powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.
+
+Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to
+have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke
+Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and
+tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an
+agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went
+apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the
+assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without
+ruffling it.
+
+'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp
+for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in
+the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting
+figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and
+prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify
+this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or
+bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own
+self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no
+more gentlemanly welcome than I.
+
+'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged
+away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a
+curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the
+silly persiflage of the belles and beaux--a word here and another
+there--and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look
+for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me
+a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in
+one and the same instant of time.
+
+I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less
+crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room
+serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots
+of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of
+redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the
+viands on the great oaken table in the midst.
+
+Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some
+quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting
+for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate
+lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.
+
+The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white
+shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to
+disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of
+apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease
+with--good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton
+for her company!
+
+Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the
+thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it
+out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady
+give a little start and a shriek.
+
+"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a
+tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me:
+"Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And
+next to Dick: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."
+
+'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had
+known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face
+sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part
+with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly,
+and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with
+me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress
+Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."
+
+Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the
+colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black
+eyes of him boring into my very soul.
+
+Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have
+come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned
+into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the
+ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid
+the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.
+
+"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she
+said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then
+she dipped us a curtsy. "_Au revoir_, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities
+you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to
+grace you here."
+
+When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.
+
+"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with
+me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel
+bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had
+myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between
+and introduced us as sweetly as you please."
+
+"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."
+
+"No! Think you so?"
+
+"'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly
+or not at all. What have you overheard?"
+
+He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest
+to Dan Morgan."
+
+"We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about
+to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of
+an hour at the outer door."
+
+At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a
+slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue
+when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it
+be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr.
+Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off
+cleverly, leaving his fair questioner--and me--none the wiser.
+
+I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set
+purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments
+were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was
+done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me
+where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she
+would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner
+in the dance.
+
+The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter
+was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her
+kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I
+bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had
+learned to know and love whispered in my ear.
+
+"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech
+with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no
+more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another
+epauletted dangler.
+
+She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing
+welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that
+made me wince.
+
+"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done
+taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"
+
+I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand
+sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.
+
+"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost
+me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will
+say how I may find Father Matthieu--"
+
+She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that
+you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do
+heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a
+falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the
+king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and
+tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this
+she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
+
+Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the
+hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and
+myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.
+
+"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery
+is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I
+will do my errand and begone."
+
+"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming
+out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I
+know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer,
+Captain Ireton?"
+
+"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to
+the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."
+
+Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes
+that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the
+voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?--you have not told him?"
+
+"No; I have told no one."
+
+"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"
+
+She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my
+dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing
+she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been
+able to right him thus far.
+
+After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?
+Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know
+you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier
+penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I
+was."
+
+"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving
+hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it
+seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to
+Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw
+the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's
+factor for the witnesses?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know what it was?"
+
+"No."
+
+"'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in
+which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby
+Hundred."
+
+"Appleby Hundred?" she echoed. "But my father--"
+
+"Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others,
+has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is
+my dear friend, and you--"
+
+"I begin to understand--a little," she said, and now her voice was low
+and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: "But now--now
+you would be free again?"
+
+"How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's
+most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman?
+that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the
+taking of it may involve you and Richard?"
+
+"No, surely," she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her
+eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. "Did you
+come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur
+John?"
+
+"There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my
+leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information
+of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any
+case--wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse."
+
+"To tell me this?"
+
+"To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall
+be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick."
+
+"I mind them not; I had forgotten them," she said.
+
+"But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me,
+Margery?"
+
+"For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?"
+
+"I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?"
+
+"Did I not say I had forgotten it?"
+
+"Thank you," I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one
+thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful
+thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I
+have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your
+dressing-room--"
+
+She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.
+
+"Spare me, sir," she begged. "There are some things that must always be
+unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you
+to know--that I know--how--how you came there--"
+
+She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But
+having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into
+words.
+
+"Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What
+could he hope to gain by such a thing?"
+
+I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue.
+For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert
+Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave
+the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's
+dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing
+begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit,
+I made haste to efface the question I had asked.
+
+"Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out
+of sight. But to the other--the matter which has brought me hither; will
+you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?"
+
+We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers,
+warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our
+poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke
+quickly.
+
+"You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not
+linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward--Oh,
+heavens! what have I said!"
+
+"Nothing," I cut in swiftly; "you are speaking now to your husband--not
+to the spy. Go on, if you please."
+
+"We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you
+are still--if you desire it, you may meet the good _curé_, and--"
+
+A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim
+her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step
+below, I whispered: "I shall keep the tryst--my first and last with you,
+dear lady. Adieu."
+
+So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I
+feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He
+was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again,
+through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed
+with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of
+the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking
+this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, when she had found me out.
+
+"'Tis the worst that could happen," she whispered. "You are discovered,
+both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be
+known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and
+now--Hark! what is that?"
+
+We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or
+two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on
+greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.
+
+I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come
+to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find
+Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was
+not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in
+here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it
+to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain
+for Dick.
+
+"Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!" Her voice was
+tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in
+spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.
+
+But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that
+Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you,
+my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another
+slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in
+guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning
+was not needed.
+
+Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. "That man! Oh,
+Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we
+are not finding Dick--we _must_ find him quickly!"
+
+There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the
+door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the
+way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not
+before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the
+chance offered, I bent to whisper.
+
+"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may
+not pass the door, as you have seen."
+
+"He will not escape without you," she demurred.
+
+"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"
+
+She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think
+of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.
+
+"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.
+
+I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely
+duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"
+
+She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the
+ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn.
+Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were
+summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the
+casement.
+
+Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing
+restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of
+the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not
+guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying
+venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of
+British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.
+
+'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name
+whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and
+the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my
+window.
+
+"'Tis I--Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the
+casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's
+sake!"
+
+"I am fair trapped," I whispered back. "Make off as you can."
+
+"And leave you behind?" So much I heard; and then came sounds of a
+struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold,
+a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed
+by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The
+edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the
+casement a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.
+
+"In the name of the king!" he said; and this was all he had time or
+leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of
+his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil
+of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and
+clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for
+yourselves.
+
+The alighting ground of the leap was the body of Dick's late antagonist
+lying prone beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and
+ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.
+
+"'Tis legs for it now," he cried. "Make for the avenue and the horses at
+the hitch-rail!"
+
+At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may
+still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So
+when we had darted through the thin line of encircling horsemen and were
+flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight
+of us thundering at our heels, Dick was the pace-setter, whilst I made
+but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in
+the effort to catch my second wind.
+
+"Courage!" shouted Dick, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he
+ran. "There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!"
+
+But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the
+box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the
+border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that
+I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:
+
+"Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now,
+then; give it to 'em hot _and_ heavy!"
+
+A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some
+confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail,
+and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.
+
+Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the
+avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse
+he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward
+road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in
+full cry behind us.
+
+'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a
+by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that
+were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who
+had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.
+
+The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.
+
+"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd
+say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off
+one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if
+so be ye blow it fierce enough."
+
+"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," Dick explained. "I had an inkling of
+what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped
+from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his
+one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."
+
+"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with
+never a word to take back to Dan Morgan--unless you have the word."
+
+"Not I," Dick said, ruefully.
+
+The old man chuckled again.
+
+"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right
+old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel
+Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part
+o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp
+to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis'll
+foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN
+
+
+In that book he wrote--the book in which he never so much as names the
+name of Ireton--my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles
+Stedman, damns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his
+ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the
+failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the
+South.
+
+Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre
+Tarleton,--they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a
+major-general's sword-knot,--'tis but the part of outspoken honest
+enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness
+on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the
+most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord
+Cornwallis's field officers.
+
+No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy.
+'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and
+won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.
+
+In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's
+and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements
+fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with
+his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers
+exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired
+for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within
+scouting distance of us.
+
+Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at
+the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and
+John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper
+into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by
+this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell
+back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post
+on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.
+
+For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland
+line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were
+posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A
+hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open
+pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians
+and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and
+every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.
+
+Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of
+outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the
+Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted
+well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own
+colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.
+
+'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the
+enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was
+better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we
+all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us
+to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the
+harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim
+low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure
+killing distance.
+
+"'Tis a brave old Daniel," said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the
+air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. "'Twill not be his fault
+if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack;
+what think you of our chances?"
+
+I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the
+British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to
+anybody's anvil.
+
+"Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact," said I. "We have
+Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first,
+and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good
+account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them
+leg-stiff to overtake us."
+
+Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan
+Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.
+
+"I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with
+a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can
+take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day
+last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of
+misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a
+look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?"
+
+The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless
+branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful
+setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war
+portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with
+the lad's when I gave him his answer.
+
+"Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no
+other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go
+hand in hand with repentance and confession--"
+
+"No, no;" he cut in quickly. "Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may
+be all too late--for me. Does she love you?--has she said she loves
+you?"
+
+"Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the
+chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the
+honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that
+content you?"
+
+At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the
+dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.
+
+"With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you,
+Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me
+the burying trench." And then he added softly: "God bless her!"
+
+I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on
+to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of
+galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers,
+one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to
+reconnoitre us most coolly.
+
+I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his
+borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous
+cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to
+cover.
+
+Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. "The
+fumblers!" he raged. "'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all
+missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"
+
+"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and,
+truly, the chance did not tarry.
+
+From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming
+under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon
+were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.
+
+'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the
+opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the
+volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun
+was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level
+rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of
+red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.
+
+"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of
+that--"
+
+But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing
+as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the
+onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the
+militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's
+were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting
+line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.
+
+"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore
+when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave
+of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a
+hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around
+the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.
+
+But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half
+prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood
+firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
+But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the
+iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way
+backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.
+
+"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a
+second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall
+we never get into it?"
+
+'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first
+company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a
+rout. The order was misunderstood,--'twas received at the precise moment
+of the upcoming of the British reserves,--and the Marylanders fell back.
+In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of
+the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the
+horses.
+
+At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing
+the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in
+the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy,
+sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give the _coup de
+grâce_, he gave the quick command: "About face! Fire! Charge!"
+
+I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length
+range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw
+the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the
+recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. "Charge them,
+lads! they're sabering the Georgians!"
+
+A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was
+at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went,
+with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the
+troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other
+curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages--the heavy
+dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled
+from catapults.
+
+'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless
+confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this
+brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler--figuring in the
+histories as an unnamed sergeant--had his share.
+
+It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton--a true Briton
+in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the
+retreat--was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons.
+Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great
+clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three
+horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel
+Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler,
+and my own mount.
+
+When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and
+was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer
+the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man
+nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front
+whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut
+him down.
+
+'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the
+unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor
+the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled
+his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellow _sabreur_ drop his
+weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long
+enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of
+his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were
+now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain
+our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a
+savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found
+his antagonist's sword hand.
+
+At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,--it hangs now over the
+chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,--gave the
+signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse,
+wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from
+his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so
+we did not come off scatheless.
+
+This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a
+little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no
+serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down
+the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to
+the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.
+
+The battle fought and won,--'twas over and done with two full hours
+before noon,--Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the
+swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away,
+and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on
+Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little
+army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest
+running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before
+Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.
+
+Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the
+victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the
+warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it,
+burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready
+for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.
+
+'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our
+cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the
+cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of
+the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed
+to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and
+stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's
+outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we
+saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the
+main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary,
+mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the
+hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.
+
+Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I
+promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions.
+Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the
+general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to
+Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in
+which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with
+Morgan at the upper fords.
+
+Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in
+the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of
+January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and
+found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners,
+and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank
+of the stream.
+
+Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel.
+'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us
+leave to rest.
+
+"You have had weary work of it, I doubt not, gentlemen," he would say.
+"Your time is your own until General Greene sets us in order for what he
+has in mind to do."
+
+I looked at Dick, and he looked at me.
+
+"May we count upon twenty-four hours, think you, Colonel?" I asked.
+
+"Safely, I should say."
+
+"Then I shall ask leave of absence for Captain Jennifer and myself till
+this time to-morrow," I went on. "This is our home neighborhood, as you
+know, and we have a little matter of private business which may be
+despatched in a day."
+
+"Will this business take you without the lines?"
+
+"That is as it may be, sir. I do not know the bounds of the outposting."
+
+The colonel wrote us passes to come and go at will past the sentries,
+and I drew Dick away.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" he asked, when we were by ourselves.
+
+"'Tis the fulfilling of my promise to you, Richard. Get your horse and
+we will ride together."
+
+"But whither?" he queried.
+
+"To Appleby Hundred--and Mistress Margery."
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+HOW WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY HUNDRED
+
+
+'Twas late in the afternoon of the last day of January when we set out
+together, Jennifer and I, from the camp of conference at Sherrard's
+Ford.
+
+The military situation, lately so critical for us, had reached and
+passed one of its many subclimaxes. Morgan's little army, with its
+prisoners still safe in hand, was on its way northward to
+Charlottesville in Virginia, and only the officers remained behind to
+confer with General Greene.
+
+For the others, Huger and Williams were hurrying up from Cheraw to meet
+the general at Salisbury; and General Davidson, with a regiment of North
+Carolina volunteers, was set to keep the fords of the Catawba.
+
+As for the British commander's intendings, we had conflicting reports.
+Two days earlier, Lord Cornwallis had burned his heavy baggage at
+Ramsour's Mill, and so we had assurance that the pursuit was only
+delayed. But whether, when he should break his camp at Forney's
+plantation, he would go northward after Morgan and the prisoners, or
+cross the river at some nearhand ford to chase our main, none of our
+scouts could tell us.
+
+We were guessing at this, Richard and I, as we jogged on together down
+the river road, and were agreed that could my Lord cross the flooded
+river without loss of time, his better chance would be to fall upon our
+main at Salisbury or thereabouts. But as to the possibility of his
+crossing, we fell apart.
+
+"Lacking another drop of rain, we are safe for forty-eight hours yet,"
+Dick would say, pointing to the brimming river rolling its brown flood
+at our right as we fared on. "And with two days' start we shall have him
+burning more than his camp wagons to overtake us."
+
+"Have it so, if you will," said I, to end the argument. "But this I
+know: were Dan Morgan or General Greene, or you or I, in Lord
+Cornwallis's shoes, the two days would not be lost."
+
+Jennifer laughed. "Leave the rest of us out, Sir Hannibal Ireton, and
+tell what you would do," he said, mocking me.
+
+We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had
+sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when
+we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis
+Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I
+pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out
+in gurgling eddies.
+
+"You've been sharp to take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but
+there is one I've not forgot," said I. "One day, about the time you were
+getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a
+company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the
+Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in
+flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see
+that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no more than armpit
+deep."
+
+"So?" said Richard; "then it behooves us to--" He stopped in mid
+sentence, drew rein and shifted his sword hilt to the front.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+For reply he pointed me to a canoe half hidden in the bushes where
+roadside and river-edge came together.
+
+I laughed. "An empty pirogue. Shall we charge and run it through?"
+
+"Hist!" said he; "that canoe was afloat a minute since. Mark the
+paddle--'tis dripping yet."
+
+As he spoke an Indian stood up in the bushes beside the pirogue, holding
+out his empty hands in token of amity. We rode up and were presently
+shaking hands with our old-time ally, the Catawba.
+
+"How!" said he; "heap how! Chief Harris glad; wah! Make think have to go
+to Sal'bury to find Captain Long-knife and Captain Jennif'. Heap much
+glad!"
+
+"Chief Harris?" I queried. "Who may he be?"
+
+The Catawba drew himself up and drummed upon his breast.
+
+"Chief Harris here," he answered, proudly. "The Great War Chief," by
+which we understood he meant General Greene, "say all Catawba take
+war-path 'gainst redcoat; make Uncanoola headman; give um new name.
+Wah!"
+
+At this we shook hands with him again, well pleased that our stanch ally
+should have recognition at the hands of the general. Then I would ask if
+he were on the way to raise his tribesmen to fight with us.
+
+"Bimeby; no have time now; big thing over yonder," pointing across the
+river. "Manitou Cornwally fool Great War Chief, mebbe, hey?"
+
+"How is that?" said Dick; and the query elicited a bit of news to make
+us prick our ears. The Catawba had been in the British camp at Forney's,
+posturing again as a Cherokee friendly to the king's side. Some sudden
+movement had been determined upon, though what it was to be he could not
+learn. At the end of his own resources he had crossed the river in a
+stolen pirogue to find and warn us.
+
+"What say you, Dick?" I asked, when we had heard the Catawba through.
+
+The lad was holding his lip in his hand and scowling as one who pits
+duty against inclination.
+
+"'Tis our cursed luck!" he gloomed. Then he swore it out by length and
+breadth, and, when the air was cleared, let me have what was in his
+mind.
+
+"After all, 'tis like enough we should find Appleby house deserted.
+Gilbert Stair will cling to Lord Cornwallis's coat-skirt as long as he
+can for sheer safety's sake. At all events, our business must wait; the
+country's weal comes first." Then to the Indian: "If we can make the
+beasts take the water, will you ferry us across, Chief?"
+
+The Catawba nodded, and made the nod good by setting us dry-shod on the
+farther bank of the brown flood. By the time we had the horses rubbed
+down and resaddled 'twas twilight in the open and night dark in the
+wood; but we were on our own ground and knew every by-path through the
+forest.
+
+So, when we had sent the Indian back to carry news of us to General
+Davidson at the lower ford, and to advertise him of our purpose, we
+mounted to begin a scouting jaunt, keeping to the wood paths and bearing
+cautiously northward toward the enemy's camp at Forney's plantation.
+
+At times we were close upon the British sentries, with every nerve
+strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours
+through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with
+the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as
+noiseless as a cat's.
+
+None the less, in the fullness of time--'twas near about midnight as we
+guessed it--we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines
+of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon
+there was the stir of an army making ready for the march.
+
+"Which way will it be, north or south?" whispered Dick, when we had
+dismounted to cloak the heads of the horses.
+
+"We shall know shortly," said I; and truly, we did, being well-nigh
+enveloped and ridden down by the fringe of light-horse deploying to
+pioneer the way. When we had sheered off to let this skirmish cloud blow
+by, Dick struck a spark into his tinder-box to have a sight of his
+compass needle.
+
+"South and by east," he announced; "that will mean Beattie's Ford, I
+take it."
+
+"Not unless they swim, horse and foot," I objected. "'Twill be
+Macgowan's, more likely."
+
+Having this uncertainty to resolve, we must hang upon the skirts of the
+British advance till we could make sure, and this proved to be a most
+perilous business. Yet by riding abreast of the moving main we did
+resolve the uncertainty; heard the orders passed from man to man, and
+later saw a small feinting detachment split off to take the road for
+Beattie's, whilst the main body held on for Macgowan's; all this before
+we were discovered in the gloaming of the dawn by some of Tarleton's
+men.
+
+Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to
+take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our
+wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close
+upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat
+riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's
+heels.
+
+'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand.
+We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and
+lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should
+have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the
+missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on
+the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes.
+
+After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol
+bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air.
+Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther
+bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across
+in time to give the alarum.
+
+As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river
+when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned
+out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the
+river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there
+were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to
+dispute the passage of an army.
+
+What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February
+first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not
+any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of
+patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one
+outnumbering host in check.
+
+'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by
+the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding
+shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on
+the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for
+swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and
+always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not
+blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of
+bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and
+the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy
+squarely.
+
+Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire;
+and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that
+back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading
+redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke
+here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a
+battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.
+
+Having no firearms save our wetted pistols, Jennifer and I crouched in
+cover, waiting to do what two swordsmen might when the blade's length
+should bridge the fast-narrowing distance between us and the advancing
+host.
+
+'Twas in this little interval of forced inaction that we heard a most
+familiar voice issuing from a clump of holly just below our covert; a
+voice lifted now in fervent prayer and again in Scriptural anathema on
+the foe.
+
+"'Let God arise and let His inimies be scattered.... Let them be as the
+chaff upon a threshing-floor'--"
+
+The sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle filled the momentary pause,
+and a British officer in a colonel's uniform swayed drunkenly in his
+saddle and plunged headlong in the stream.
+
+"'Let them be as the children of Amalek before the Mighty One of Israel:
+make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, make all their
+princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna.... O my God, make them like unto a
+wheel, and as the stubble before the wind; like as the fire that burneth
+up the wood, and as the flame that consumeth the mountains.'"
+
+Crack! went the long-barreled piece again, and again an officer
+hallooing on his floundering battalion bent to his saddle horn and
+slipped into the turbid flood.
+
+My gorge rose. This picking off of officers has always seemed to me the
+savagest of war's barbarities. How Richard divined my thought and
+purpose, I know not; but when I would have slipped down to Yeates's
+holly bush he laid a detaining hand on my arm.
+
+"Let be," he said; "'tis murder, if you like, but all war is that. When
+old Eph's turn comes, they will kill him as relentlessly as he is
+killing them."
+
+By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the
+shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham's men,
+and the king's muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by
+platoon and volley fire. Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view
+of the situation.
+
+"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "'tis high time Joe Graham was getting
+his lads in order for a foot race. Once those fellows come ashore
+they'll play hare and hounds with us to the king's taste. Keep your eye
+on the nags, Jack. It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a
+belated retreat."
+
+We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be
+out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank. As I looked to make
+sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of
+hoofs on the Appleby road. I made sure this would be General Davidson
+bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late.
+O'Hara's men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying
+his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree
+fringe sing with musket balls.
+
+"'Tis our cue to run away!" Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet. "To
+the horses!"
+
+But now we were too late. Davidson's men were between us and the scrub
+oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.
+
+Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a
+tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now
+dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift
+parrying musket-balls.
+
+What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering
+heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered
+Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the
+retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst
+he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the
+galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after
+them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.
+
+"Up with you and out of this!" cried Jennifer, setting me the example.
+"We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!"
+
+But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his
+holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting
+his terrible imprecations on the enemy.
+
+Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old
+man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to
+his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain
+regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer
+shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself,
+cheering his men on to the attack.
+
+We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire,
+the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British
+commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the
+entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.
+
+The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath. "Dad blast ye for a pair
+of aim-sp'ilin'--"
+
+A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote
+through the branches overhead. A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I
+stooped to recover it. When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man
+tightly in his arms. Yeates's belt was cut, and a little oozing
+well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.
+
+"Ease me down, Cap'n Dick; ease me down. The old man's done for, this
+time, ez I allow--spang in the innards. Ease me down and get off for
+yerselves, if so be ye can, im--me--jit--"
+
+The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless.
+Dick's oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who
+said: "Come on--the living before the dead!" and so we made the
+well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.
+
+How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must
+figure for yourselves, if you can. The men of the British vanguard were
+all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no
+one of them raised a hand to stay us. I have thought since that mayhap
+they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above
+wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead. Be that as it may, we rode away
+unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain's slashings, and I
+in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house
+because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we
+were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.
+
+But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in true _ritter_ fashion;
+and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said:
+
+"Now we are well out of that, what next? We can not go to Margery with
+the whole British army at our heels."
+
+"Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour," I asserted. Then, as
+once before, I gave him my best bow. "For the last time, it may be, let
+me play the lord of the manor. You are very welcome to my father's
+demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings."
+
+"All?" said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by
+side.
+
+"Yes, all," said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the
+lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my
+father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.
+
+"Then you do not love Madge more?" he queried, his eye kindling.
+
+"Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have
+the house and all its holdings."
+
+We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert
+Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed
+blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and
+when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad
+turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.
+
+"You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!" he said. "She
+is not here."
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+IN WHICH A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE
+
+
+What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new
+tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were
+spared the knowing. For when he said, "She is not here," two happenings
+intervened to give us both other things to think of.
+
+The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a
+troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the
+swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and
+bowing behind it.
+
+Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing
+more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the
+avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted
+things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an
+ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing
+without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.
+
+It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.
+
+"The horses!--we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring
+his bell and tell the redcoats we are here," he would say; and before I
+knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling
+softly to the big gray.
+
+Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came
+obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when
+the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair
+of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.
+
+"So far, so good," quoth Dick. Then to the old black, who had stood by,
+saucer-eyed and speechless, the while: "Anthony, do you be as big a
+numbskull as you were born to be, and hold these redcoat gentlemen in
+palaver till we can win out at the back."
+
+The old majordomo nodded his good-will, but now my slow wit came in
+play. "We've done it now," said I. "The horses will go out as they came
+in, or not at all. Had you forgotten the stair at the back?"
+
+Judge for yourselves, my dears, if this were the time, place or crisis
+for a man to fling himself upon the hall settle, grip his ribs and laugh
+like any lack-wit. Yet this is what Richard Jennifer did.
+
+It was in the very midst of his gust of ill-timed merriment, while the
+horses were nosing niftily at their strange surroundings, and the
+hoof-strokes of the redcoat troop could be plainly heard on the gravel
+of the avenue, that I chanced to lift my eyes to the stair. There,
+looking down upon us with speechless astoundment in the blue-gray eyes,
+stood our dear lady.
+
+Another instant and she was with us, stamping her foot and crying: "_Mon
+Dieu!_ what is this? Are you gone mad, both of you?"
+
+Dick's answer was another burst of laughter, loud enough, you would
+think, to be heard by those beyond the door.
+
+"Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge--two horses and two
+asses," he said. And then to old Anthony: "Open the door, Tony, and
+invite the gentlemen in."
+
+But Margery was before him. Ah, my dears, a man's wit is like a
+matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder
+whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a
+woman's is like the spark in a tinder-box--a quick snip of flint and
+steel and you have your fire. In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy
+curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to
+the rear.
+
+"Quick!" she cried; "lead them gently, for the love of heaven!"
+
+She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand,
+rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the
+time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep
+within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses
+by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of
+ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.
+
+Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady.
+Calling Dick to help her--in all the fierce haste of it I marked that
+she called to Dick and not to me--she unlocked and opened the door to
+the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were
+safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed
+behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could
+see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.
+
+Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.
+
+"Lord!" said he; "did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your
+adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!"
+
+I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a
+soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is
+slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another
+and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my
+heart, at least.
+
+The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on
+the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall,
+and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release
+or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or
+encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found
+the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+took a survey of our jail.
+
+'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such
+an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly
+believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this
+stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room
+for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.
+
+Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly
+depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one
+of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.
+
+"There is no lack of potables," says my candle-bearer; "but, unhappily,
+there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the
+horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good
+feeding of oats."
+
+"Truly," said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from
+the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks
+which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the
+sorrel or the gray was foaled.
+
+Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while
+before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.
+
+"'Tis Madge," said Dick, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and
+'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.
+
+What passed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the
+door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go
+abroad.
+
+Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better
+part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well,
+and more candles.
+
+"We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far," he said.
+"Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs
+pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge
+can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted
+stiff for our sakes."
+
+This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of
+it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at
+Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say
+no word to Richard.
+
+So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the
+horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle
+coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no
+more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving
+them a drink.
+
+When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the
+silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking
+in low tones to match the place and circumstance; and I do think in
+those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the
+outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.
+
+And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm
+came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the muffled
+rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor
+hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.
+
+I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There
+was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we
+knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of
+reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we
+two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid
+to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms,
+Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I
+learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have
+hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.
+
+From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things
+more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon
+the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.
+
+"'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack," he would
+say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.
+
+"No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to."
+
+"Yet you said once--in that black night when I went mad and would have
+killed you--that your life lay between Madge and me."
+
+"So it did--and does. And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I
+have worn that life upon my sleeve."
+
+"Nay," he said, very gently; "you need not go so high for a witness;
+have I not seen?"
+
+We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our
+dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and
+won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my
+brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful
+night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a
+friend--nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter
+hatred.
+
+He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see
+him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for
+satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the
+guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip
+that was not of anger.
+
+"Dear God," said he; "'tis I who stand in the way."
+
+"No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not
+so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell
+you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the
+incomplete marriage--'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the
+Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to
+see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by
+her own appointment to meet him in her father's house."
+
+He shook his head slowly. "You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do
+think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves--not me."
+
+I could afford to smile at that.
+
+"If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not
+love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad."
+
+But he would only shake his head again.
+
+"'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks
+in the glade."
+
+"'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike," said I.
+
+"But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess."
+
+"Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to
+tell me."
+
+"None the less--ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never
+have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been
+something warmer than hatred in her heart."
+
+"'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there
+been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as
+the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western
+mountains? She never spoke a word to me, Dick, in all those weeks."
+
+"Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her
+to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as
+she should be, and you are blunter than I--which is the worst I could
+say of you."
+
+"No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of
+the marriage is of her own proposing--at least, I should say I only
+hinted at it."
+
+"There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that
+you love her, Jack?"
+
+"Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I
+have confessed, but this one thing I have not done."
+
+"Well," said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by
+word, "what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you
+have made her that bitterest thing in all the world--a woman scorned?"
+
+I would not listen to him more.
+
+"This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond
+the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the
+Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the
+burning?"
+
+"I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help."
+
+"Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she
+wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, Dick,
+but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me."
+
+He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth
+under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my
+hand most lovingly, saying, "Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such
+a price?"
+
+"Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the
+matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if
+you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our
+necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose."
+
+"Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the
+gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own
+trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say;
+yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove
+it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have
+that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before
+we three go apart again."
+
+I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.
+
+"As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have
+drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young
+man brews for him. But if the priest--"
+
+Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most
+singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from
+all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding
+flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole
+cellar with its vivid glare.
+
+"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did
+that come from?"
+
+I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was,
+or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the
+farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the
+great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the
+night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when
+another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place
+in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.
+
+The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and
+framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity
+peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert
+Stair's lawyer-factor.
+
+In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash
+and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in
+place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so
+far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.
+
+"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.
+
+"'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head,"
+said I. "He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging."
+
+"'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?"
+
+"I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as
+ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm."
+
+"Oho!" said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I
+could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. "They can hang me
+when I am too dead to cut and thrust more--not sooner."
+
+I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the
+horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade--one of our captures at the Cowpens;
+and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.
+
+"Never mind," said I; "give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play
+it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough."
+
+He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me
+as if I had said something moving. "You are every inch a soldier, Jack;
+you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be." And
+he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.
+
+Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of
+our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that
+its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited
+till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like
+frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the
+bolt shot back.
+
+But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or
+timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the
+ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.
+
+"Come!" she panted; "come quickly--there is not an instant to spare.
+The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the
+dragoons!"
+
+I cut in swiftly. "He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?"
+
+She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the
+other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness
+to have us out and away.
+
+"No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the
+order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang
+without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were
+his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?"
+
+Richard gave a low whistle.
+
+"So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with
+us," he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. "Your
+father?" I gasped. "And he sent you to save me?"
+
+"Surely," she said. "Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?"
+Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the
+poorest, I could see her eyes flash. "Will you squander the last moment
+in silly questions?" she burst out. "Come, I say!"
+
+I smiled. "Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep
+the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this."
+
+She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to
+my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword
+to be my own good blade of proof--the ancient Ferara willed me by my
+father.
+
+Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then
+and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord
+Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events
+suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious
+footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry
+above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.
+
+"Too late!" said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind
+the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me
+to follow.
+
+We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us,
+when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping
+through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin--alone.
+
+What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man
+will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I
+guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper
+person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the
+trap were still safe shut and secure.
+
+'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the
+wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to
+run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of
+those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and
+swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress
+Margery when he should have her in his power.
+
+A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing
+theme--ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's
+design to marry my widow and the estate--and I do think the lad would
+have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off
+suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing
+into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but
+squeak at him.
+
+He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.
+
+"By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would
+have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering
+old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this
+devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would
+be a rare jest--to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed,
+slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked
+lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this."
+
+He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and
+craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and
+he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the "dead man" from the
+wick. At that we heard him muttering again.
+
+"'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by
+that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel,
+and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress
+Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door.
+But now he's gone--vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that
+damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose
+at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!"
+
+The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the
+cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little
+window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges,
+and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of
+the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw
+him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop
+down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when
+he discovered me.
+
+To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the
+still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes,
+searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange
+halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery
+we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light
+came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover
+of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in
+where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.
+
+"So-ho!" said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis
+you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap
+you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up
+with you and come along."
+
+All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling
+frenzy-fit of protestation.
+
+"Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir--a devil's own trap! I--I am not
+the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I--hands off, you cursed villains,
+or I'll have the law on you!" this last when one of the men cast the
+noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides
+in the looping of another cord. "By God! you shall all smart for this;
+all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend
+in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who--"
+
+A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and
+Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched
+him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was
+rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and
+bidding his men make haste.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+HOW RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID
+
+
+For some breathless moments after we three were left alone in the
+Stygian darkness of the wine cellar, no word was spoken. The rolling of
+the thunder drum was muffled now, as it were booming out the dirge of
+the man who had digged a pit and had himself fallen therein; and the
+lightning flashes coming at longer intervals served but to intensify the
+gloom they lit up for the instant.
+
+It was a minced oath from Richard that first broke the spell that bound
+us.
+
+"'Twas too much for Madge," said he, "she has fainted. Swing the door,
+and light another candle."
+
+I did both as quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor,
+stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by
+all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches to bring her to.
+
+"Water!" said Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with
+wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you.
+For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be
+cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the drenching doctor with the
+wine.
+
+"Lord!" cried Dick, the sweat standing out upon his face in great drops;
+"this is terrible! What shall we do?"
+
+"Jeanne will know what to do," I asserted. "We must get her out of this
+and up to her chamber."
+
+Richard started to his feet and stooped to gather the dear body of her
+in his arms. But in the act he paused and straightened himself to look
+fixedly at me.
+
+"Do you take her, Jack; she is--she is--your wife."
+
+"Nay," said I, drawing back. "You are her own true lover; and could she
+choose her bearer--"
+
+"A murrain on your finickings!" he burst out. "She may die whilst we are
+haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and
+begone!"
+
+"But bethink you, Dick," I urged; "if you are taken, you have one chance
+in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a
+spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it."
+
+Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could
+twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's
+eyes flashed and his lip curled.
+
+"Overlook it in me, if you can," he said, with fine scorn. "I had not
+thought upon the peril of it." And with that he took her in his arms as
+she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But
+on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. "Once more,
+your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me
+precedence. Can you trust me with her?"
+
+"Aye, dear lad; now and ever," said I; and so I pushed him out.
+
+After he was gone I made shift to lead the horses through the narrow
+passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point
+them toward the stables.
+
+This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was
+that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the
+wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that
+despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe.
+But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of
+impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and
+thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be
+set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate
+had plunged me.
+
+'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the
+persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my
+sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of
+the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to
+dispel.
+
+And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with
+lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword
+and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the
+conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril
+more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and
+when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the
+hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird
+his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and
+fortitude as his creed hath taught him.
+
+To such a faring through all the days and nights of this grim desert of
+a future these lonely hours in the wine vault were a fitting vigil, as I
+conceived; and when I had hugged my misery close, and a sort of
+monstrous self-pity had come to make a seeming virtue of the hard
+necessity, I was best pleased to be alone. In such a frame of mind the
+sound of footsteps in the out-cellar, warning me that more company was
+coming, sent a wave of sullen anger to submerge me, and I do think 'twas
+in me to turn my back upon a friend who should come to tell me I was
+free to go at large.
+
+Since I had led forth the good horses the great oaken door had stood
+ajar. So I wondered why my visitor made so much ado rattling the key in
+the lock. Then it came to me suddenly that the noise and delay were
+meant to give me timely warning; and at the scent of threatening
+peril--a peril I might cope with and grapple soldierwise--I became a man
+again. A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its
+barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly
+behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.
+
+Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me
+more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her
+best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like
+stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at
+that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her
+candle held high to light the inner gloom.
+
+"This way, Scipio," she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out
+the madeira bin. "We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the
+Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting." Wherewith she stood aside
+to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.
+
+At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were
+about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup.
+Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come
+herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her
+word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my
+prisonment was near an end.
+
+I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many
+wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth
+and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon
+his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around
+before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.
+
+But whilst I hesitated I saw her start back with a little cry of terror.
+Standing in the arched doorway through which the mulatto had but now
+passed was a man cloaked, hatted, booted and spurred as for the road. At
+her cry he doffed his hat and ...
+
+My dears, I shall never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask
+this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid
+in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire
+had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the
+skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face.
+Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of
+this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet.
+
+And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he
+laughed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness. "You are
+surprised, Mistress Margery; you heard my Lord's order and thought I
+would be by now some miles on the road to Salisbury?"
+
+"If you were the loyal soldier you should be, sir," she said, drawing
+herself up proudly, "you would be at the head of your troop, as his
+Lordship directed." And then, with a gesture that was most queenly:
+"Stand aside, Sir--Libertine, and let me pass."
+
+His answer was another mocking laugh, and he stepped within to close
+the door and lock it. When he turned to front her again his face was the
+face of a tormented devil.
+
+"By God! you think too lightly of me, Mistress Margery. Before ever this
+day dawned I owed you much, but like a spiteful little hellicat you must
+needs add to the score by making me a target for your wit at the
+supper-table. 'Twill cost a life to more than one of them who laughed
+with you, my lady, but 'twill cost you dearer still."
+
+He came nearer as he spoke, thrusting that horrible face farther into
+the circle of candle-light; but she would not draw back nor flinch a
+hair, and I marked that the hand that held the candlestick was as steady
+as a rock. But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her
+shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning
+upon me.
+
+"Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?" she said.
+
+"No!" he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once,
+and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it
+into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in
+her face. "The thing they'll find here in the morning--"
+
+He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his
+back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between
+his ribs. But my dear lady would not have it so.
+
+"No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!" she cried;
+and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she
+became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.
+
+But now my blood was up. "You are my wife," I said, coldly. "If he had a
+dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you."
+
+"But not that way--oh, not that way, I do beseech you!" she begged.
+"Think of what it will mean to you--and--and to me. For your own sake,
+Monsieur John."
+
+I took my heel from the man's back.
+
+"Your wish is law to me, dear lady. But your way is clear now; you may
+go."
+
+She took a step toward the door.
+
+"You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?"
+
+"By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish
+it, he shall die like one."
+
+I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let
+him have his chance to die sword in hand.
+
+"Remember, I have your promise," she said, turning to go. "The army is
+on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be
+here to--"
+
+The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror. Watching his
+chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge,
+not at me, but at her.
+
+Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that
+it was life for one of us and death for the other. I looked to see my
+lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast
+as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted
+the grim vault for the duel.
+
+As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this
+thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman's chance I had promised to
+give him. But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying
+by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure
+holding the candle aloft. As I have often said, he was a pretty
+swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of
+the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword
+play was most masterly.
+
+Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara's
+point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German
+long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have
+passed through him. After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I
+supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm
+could outweary his. Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant;
+and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce
+eyes glinting like a basilisk's, with no sign in them that my time was
+come to press him home.
+
+None the less, I did press him, inch by inch, driving him at each new
+clash of the steel a little deeper into the gloom that crowded close
+upon the narrow circle of candle-light. He saw my object--to push him to
+unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness--and
+he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I
+had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life
+and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold.
+
+Here the end came quickly. Being entangled among the broached butts he
+had no room to play skilfully. So presently it chanced that he caught
+his point in the chine of a cask and his blade snapped short at the
+hilt. With a yelling oath, hissing hot from the devil's thumb-book, he
+snatched up the broken blade to fling and stick it javelin-wise in my
+shoulder; and then I saw the dull gleam of the candle-light on the
+barrel of a pistol.
+
+Had he aimed the pistol at me, I trust I should still have given him his
+gentleman's chance. But when I saw him level the weapon at my dear lady
+... they came in one and the same heart-beat; the sword-thrust that
+found his life and took it; the crash of the pistol-shot echoing like a
+clap of thunder in the close vault, and pitchy darkness to draw its
+curtain over all.
+
+I know not how I reached her, pulling the broken sword-blade from my
+shoulder as I ran; nor can I tell you how an upgushing spring of
+thankfulness choked me when I found her unharmed by the bullet which had
+snuffed the candle out.
+
+She was in a most piteous state, now it was all over; and though I
+charged it all where I supposed it should belong--to the account of a
+natural womanly passion to cling to something in her moment of
+weakness--yet the blood ran quick in my veins when she suffered me to
+lead her out of that dismal, smoking death-pit, she clinging to me the
+while so close that I could feel the warmth of her and the fluttering of
+her dear heart beneath my hand.
+
+She said no word, nor did I, till we were come above stairs. We found
+the rooms on the main floor deserted by all save the blacks, who were
+clearing away the debris of the feast of leave-taking. In the hall we
+came upon old Anthony, putting on the chain of the outer door. Here my
+lady drew apart from me.
+
+"Is my Lord gone?" she asked.
+
+"Yis, Missa. He say tell yo' he gwine tek it mighty hawd yo' no come ter
+gib him de sti'up-cup."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"Gone to de lib'ry to wait fo' Massa Pengarbin; yis, Missa."
+
+She turned away, shuddering at this mention of the factor for whose
+coming the master would wait long and in vain, and I heard her murmur:
+"Oh, the horror of this night!" But in a moment she came back to me, and
+was her cool, calm self again.
+
+"For that I am here, alive and well, I thank you, Captain Ireton. Need I
+say more?"
+
+I can not tell you what was in the words to make me hot with anger, as I
+had but now been hot with love. But the new wound in my shoulder was
+bleeding freely, and I would not let her see I was hurt; and if aught
+will stanch a wound, 'tis anger.
+
+"You need not say so much," I retorted, bowing low. "You have spoken now
+and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever
+so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as
+you, Mistress Margery."
+
+She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears. I saw what I had done
+and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong
+to the night's whip of scourgings.
+
+When she spoke again it was to say: "This is your own house, Captain
+Ireton; what will you do?"
+
+"One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?"
+
+"He is."
+
+"Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do."
+
+She bent her head in acquiescence.
+
+"You will find the--the person whom you wish to see in your old room in
+the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?"
+
+"No; I can find the way."
+
+My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like
+a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where
+we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.
+
+I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come
+upon me, and drew her arm in mine.
+
+"We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that
+you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu."
+
+And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we
+climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of
+destiny at its farther end.
+
+We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking
+that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron
+brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a
+taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she
+were calling to me across the eternal abysses. "Monsieur John!--you are
+hurt!" And then, from a still remoter distance: "Oh, Father
+Matthieu--Dick! come quickly! He is dying!"
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT
+
+
+Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow
+land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not
+recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer
+filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?
+
+For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of
+the night are shuttled into the warp of life. But presently comes the
+master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid
+the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to
+mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the
+shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness
+regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, "Dear
+God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!"
+
+Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or
+its number in the calendar.
+
+I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored
+soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney
+piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner;
+the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had
+rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen
+that once--was it yesterday or months ago?--had minded me of my mother.
+
+When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever
+dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I
+was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.
+
+So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, "Dear God,'twas but a
+dream!" and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery
+were sitting where I last remembered her.
+
+She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great
+chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the
+evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.
+
+I sighed, and there was a catching of the breath at the bottom of it.
+Truly, the wondrous dream had had its agonies, but there were also
+beatitudes to tip the scale the other way. For I had dreamed this
+sweet-faced watcher was my wife--in name, at least.
+
+'Twas while I looked, minding not the eye-ache the effort cost, that she
+rose and came softly to the bedside. She said no word, but, as once in
+the dream-time, she laid a cool palm on my forehead. Weak as I was--and
+surely King David was not weaker when he wrote his bones were gone to
+water--the old love-madness of that other day came to thrill me at her
+touch, and I made as if I would take her hand and press it to my lips.
+
+"Nay, sir," she said, with a swift return to sick-room discipline, "you
+must not stir; you have been sorely hurt."
+
+"Aye," said I; "I do remember; 'twas in a duel with one Francis
+Falconnet. He said he would make you his--"
+
+Now the soft palm was laid on my lips, and I kissed it till she snatched
+it away.
+
+"_Ma foi!_" she cried; "I think you are in a hopeful way to recover now,
+Captain Ireton. I do protest I shall go and send old Anthony to sit with
+you."
+
+"Anthony?" said I; "he was in the dream, too, putting up the chain on
+the hall door."
+
+"Ah, _mon Dieu_!" she said softly, as if to herself, "he is wandering
+yet." At which, as if to try to help me: "'Twas no dream; you did see
+him putting on the chain."
+
+"Did I? I made sure I dreamed it. But tell me another thing; was it not
+yesterday that I met Sir Francis Falconnet under the oaks in the wood
+field and got this pair of redhot pincers in my shoulder?"
+
+She turned away, and if I ever saw a tear there was one trembling in her
+eyelashes.
+
+"'Twas three full weeks ago," she said. "And it was not in the wood
+field--'twas in the wine cellar. Never tell me you do not remember; I--I
+could never--ah, Mother of Sorrows! that would be worse than all."
+
+Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least,
+and so I did.
+
+"I remember well enough," I hastened to say. "But being here, and seeing
+you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making
+all the interval stand as a dream. Have I been ailing?"
+
+"You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that
+Doctor Carew has twice given you over."
+
+"No," said I; "there was no fear of that. I am like that man in the old
+German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby
+his chance to die. Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery;
+I have tried him too often."
+
+"Hush!" she said; "'tis an ill thing to jest about. Why should you want
+to die?"
+
+"Rather ask why I should choose to live. But this is beside the mark.
+You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must
+e'en make the best of it."
+
+She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of
+the heart; I knew not what.
+
+"'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, _n'est-ce pas_? And I must not
+let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at
+all--'tis Doctor Carew's order."
+
+So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows;
+and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a
+pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post
+again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell
+asleep.
+
+This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I
+lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better
+part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return
+to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of
+dreams.
+
+By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to
+dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a
+bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I
+awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and
+once--but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and
+drowse in the great chair--I opened my eyes to find that my company was
+the master of the house.
+
+He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted
+candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony
+hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but
+at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin
+legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as
+though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.
+
+"I give ye good even, Captain Ireton," he said, finally, rasping the
+greeting out at me as it had been a curse. "I hope ye've slept well."
+
+I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his
+coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in
+my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.
+
+"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish
+pause.
+
+"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this
+room, Mr. Stair," I would say.
+
+He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good
+care of his own; and I laughed.
+
+"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on
+your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir."
+
+He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed
+to. But his spoken word belied the nods.
+
+"The ways of Providence are inscrutable--something inscrutable, Captain
+Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your
+mercies."
+
+"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier,
+I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the
+field."
+
+"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay
+wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of
+substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country
+than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."
+
+"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise
+which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.
+
+"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some--yourself, for example, and
+the leal land of adoption for others--your humble servant, to wit. I've
+taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to
+know."
+
+At this I must needs laugh outright.
+
+"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"
+
+"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the
+peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
+precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
+Captain Ireton."
+
+Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
+tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.
+
+"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on
+your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
+the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
+'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
+and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
+day at Guilford Court House."
+
+"A victory?" I would ask.
+
+"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
+I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
+they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
+reaving redcoats in these parts."
+
+His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
+telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
+it showed its head.
+
+"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
+ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
+I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
+your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
+land for ye."
+
+"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of
+saying more.
+
+"I have that--every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas
+since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to
+account to ye for every season's crop--when ye'll pay down the bit
+steward's fee."
+
+"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him
+to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this
+accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"
+
+He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the
+gullibility of his customer.
+
+"Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a
+few hundred pounds, more or less--sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,"
+he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it
+was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. "I've brought ye that last
+will and testament ye signed," handing me the parchment. "No doubt
+you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a
+codicil or two."
+
+Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the
+marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: "Let us be frank with each other
+in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter
+between us?"
+
+"She's a jade!" he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But
+he recovered his self-control instantly. "Ye'd no expect a romantic bit
+lassie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old
+dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything,
+I daresay."
+
+"Then I will tell you the plain truth of it," I said. "This marriage was
+never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the
+time; a makeshift to serve a purpose. If you think I would hold your
+daughter to it--"
+
+"Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about! Ye'll never cast the
+poor bit lassie off that way! Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will
+have a word to say to that."
+
+For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected
+that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to.
+Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.
+
+"There is no 'casting off' about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church,
+there is good ground for an appeal to Rome. The marriage as it stands
+is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough
+legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still
+lacking everything of--"
+
+He could not wait to let me finish.
+
+"Lacking, d'ye say?" he rapped out, wrathfully. "And whose fault is
+that, ye cold-blooded stick? Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and
+heels into your own wife's bed-room? And how do you thank me? I'm to
+suppose ye quarrel wi' her like the dour-faced imp o' Sawtan that ye
+are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man
+old enough to be your father!"
+
+'Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it. Yet
+I would not suffer him to bluster me aside.
+
+"It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more
+as you must have known that Mistress Margery's faith was plighted to
+Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pass."
+
+"Did I know it?" he shrilled. "That lang-legged jackanapes of a Dickie
+Jennifer? Light o' love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a
+finger for him."
+
+"You are talking far enough beside the mark now," I retorted. "Your
+daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this
+entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from
+the wars."
+
+"She will, ye say? And what will become o' the braw acres of Appleby
+that gait, I'd like to know? But ye're daft, man; clean daft. Didn't I
+speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode
+away after they had pitten ye to bed? She tell't him flat she loved
+another man."
+
+"Another man?" I echoed. "I--explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair.
+What other man--"
+
+He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of
+cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.
+
+"Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!" he quavered, when all his breath was
+spent upon the bigger malisons. "Has it never come intil your thick
+numbskull that the poor fule lassie is sick wi' love for ye, ye
+dour-faced loon?"
+
+And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I
+heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the
+choice phrases he could lay tongue to.
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END
+
+
+I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade
+did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said
+to the one account--the miser's.
+
+Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but
+indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of
+Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made
+sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of
+substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his
+goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet
+here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into
+rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.
+
+I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit
+for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to
+wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap
+at the door and Mistress Margery entered.
+
+"Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is
+turned?" she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the
+candles in the mantel sconces.
+
+The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the
+chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat
+faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful
+protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?
+
+Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays
+bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a passing gust
+of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my
+moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she
+used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself
+again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her
+to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.
+
+For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.
+
+"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel
+with him."
+
+"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes
+two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to
+give me this," I added, handing her the will.
+
+She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there
+softly to herself.
+
+--"'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife,
+Margery--' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so,
+would you, Monsieur John?"
+
+"'Tis but a form," I would say. "All wives are 'loving' in lawyers'
+speech."
+
+She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the
+moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.
+
+"I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?"
+
+I would not let her pin me down.
+
+"If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear
+lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but
+another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery."
+
+"Not once?"
+
+"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could
+do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth
+and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the
+Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at
+day-dawn in the oak glade?"
+
+She would not answer me direct.
+
+"'Twas I who brought you to that pass," she said, speaking soft and low.
+"But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak
+glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your
+shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have
+followed."
+
+Saying this she fell silent for a space, and when she spoke again she
+was become by some subtle transmutation my trusting little maid of the
+by-gone halcyon-time.
+
+"Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days,
+Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me,
+had I had one?"
+
+I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.
+
+"Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again
+to-night?"
+
+"Try me and see, dear lady."
+
+"Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'" she pouted. "'Twas 'Margery' and
+'Monsieur John' a year agone."
+
+"Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you
+better."
+
+"No," she said; "that is Dick's name for me; and--and it is of Dick that
+I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?"
+
+I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond
+there was between us.
+
+"Truly?" There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of
+the word, but it was gone when she went on.
+
+"Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better.
+Tell me, if you please, must I marry him--when--"
+
+"When you are free to do it?" I finished for her. "Why should you not,
+my dear?"
+
+She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and
+would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.
+
+"You used to say--in that other time--that love should go before a
+marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?"
+
+"You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present.
+But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you--"
+
+She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of
+happy children at play.
+
+"And I?--now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell
+me; do I love him as his mistress should?"
+
+"Nay, surely," said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me,
+"surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since."
+
+"Have I?" she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that
+came straight from her French mother. "Mayhap you overheard me say it,
+Monsieur Eavesdropper?"
+
+"God help me, little one--so I did," said I.
+
+All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like
+an accusing goddess.
+
+"You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have
+dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that
+I had not failed in any wifely duty!"
+
+"The time and circumstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far
+from blaming you, my dear. But let it pass, 'tis enough that I know you
+love him as he loves you."
+
+Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon
+the hassock, laughing merrily.
+
+"O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman's heart! 'Tis you
+should be the lover, instead of Dick. He rides a-courting as he would
+charge a legion on a battle-field. But nothing would ever tempt you to
+be so masterful rough, would it, Monsieur John? You would look deep into
+your sweetheart's eyes and say--Tell me what you would say, _mon ami_?"
+
+Ah, my dears, I hope no one of you will ever be tempted as I was tempted
+then. I forgot my dear lad, forgot honor, forgot everything save that I
+had leave to tell her how I had loved her from the first; how I should
+go on loving her to the end. So for a moment I hung trembling on the
+brink; and then she pushed me over.
+
+"Is this how you would do, Monsieur--Monsieur Ogre?--sit stock still and
+glower at the poor thing as if you were between two minds as to loving
+her or eating her?"
+
+I bent quickly, took her face between my hands and kissed her
+twice--thrice.
+
+"That is what I should do. Now that you have made me what I was not
+before, are you satisfied?"
+
+'Twas long before she gave me a word. And when she spoke it was only to
+say: "Are you not most monstrous ashamed, Monsieur John?"
+
+"No!" said I. "I am but a man, and you have roused that part of me that
+knows neither shame nor remorse. I love you, Mistress Margery; do you
+hear? I have loved you since that day in June when I came back from
+death's door to find you sitting here to bear me company."
+
+She locked her fingers across her knee and would not look at me.
+
+"But by your own showing you should be ashamed, sir," she insisted.
+"What of the dear friend to whom you would give up even the love of your
+mistress?"
+
+"You may flay me as you will; I shall neither flinch nor go back from my
+word. You are mine, and I shall give you up to no man. I know I have not
+your love--shall never have it. Also, I know that I have gained an enemy
+where once I had a loving friend. Richard Jennifer may kill me if he
+please--he shall have the chance to do it; but you are mine and shall be
+whilst I live to claim and hold you."
+
+There was something less than anger in the blue-gray eyes when she let
+me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful
+mockery in them when she said: "Dear heart! how masterful rough you
+have grown, all in a moment, my Lord." And then the beautiful eyes
+filled and she said, "Poor Dick!" in a way to make me suffer all the
+torments of that old myth-king who could never quaff the water that was
+ever rising to his lips.
+
+"Aye, you may love him, if you must and will," I gloomed. "God pity me!
+I know you do love him."
+
+She looked up quickly. "So you have said a dozen times before. Tell me,
+Monsieur Oracle, how do you know it?"
+
+"If I tell you, you will hate me more than you do now."
+
+"That would be hard, indeed," she murmured. "Yet I would hear you say
+it."
+
+"Listen, then: once, when we three were at the very door and threshold
+of death, you wrote the cry of your heart out on a bit of paper for a
+leave-taking and sent it to the man you loved. You said, 'Though you
+must needs believe my love is pledged to your dear friend and mine, 'tis
+yours, and yours alone.' Were not these your very words?"
+
+Her "yes" was but the lightest whisper, but I heard it and went on.
+"That is all, save this; the Indian bearer of your letter blundered and
+gave it me instead of Dick."
+
+She looked me full in the eyes and my soul went all afire. Then she laid
+her cheek against my knee and I heard her dear voice as it had been a
+chime of sweet-toned joy-bells:
+
+"Ah, Monsieur John; how blind this thing called love can make us all.
+Suppose--suppose the Indian did not blunder, dear lord and master of
+me?"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17690-8.txt or 17690-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/17690-8.zip b/17690-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f183a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-8.zip
diff --git a/17690-h.zip b/17690-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99cbc71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h.zip
diff --git a/17690-h/17690-h.htm b/17690-h/17690-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1662fce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/17690-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,16216 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Master of Appleby, by Francis Lynde</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         }
+    HR { width: 33%;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+       }
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .toc {padding-left: 1em; margin-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; }
+
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .note     {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+    .pagenum  {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem span        {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 2em;}
+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em;}
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+             height: 5px; }
+	pre		{font-size: 75%; }
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Master of Appleby, by Francis Lynde,
+Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Master of Appleby</p>
+<p>       A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady</p>
+<p>Author: Francis Lynde</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 6, 2006  [eBook #17690]</p>
+<p>Last Updated: December 27, 2017</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Clare Coney,<br>
+                    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+                    (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3></center><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="image-a"><!-- Image a --></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/cover.jpg"><img src="images/cover-tb.jpg" height="422" width="300" alt="Original Cover"></a>
+</center>
+
+<h1>The Master of<br />
+ Appleby</h1>
+
+<h5>A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part With<br />
+the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but<br />
+Chiefly With the Adventures Therein of Two<br />
+Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady</h5><br />
+<br />
+
+<h2><i>By Francis Lynde</i></h2><br />
+
+<br />
+<h5>ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br />
+T. de THULSTRUP<br />
+<br />
+NEW YORK<br />
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP<br />
+PUBLISHERS<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Copyright 1902<br />
+The Bowen-Merrill Company<br />
+October<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+TO<br />
+Mr. Edward G. Richmond<br />
+OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,<br />
+WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT<br />
+MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY<br />
+REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR<br />
+THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY<br />
+INSCRIBED</h5><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name="image-1"><!-- Image 1 --></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/image1.jpg"><img src="images/image1-tb.jpg" height="450" width="263"
+alt="But now I was fronting death, and could be as calm as she"
+title="But now I was fronting death, and could be as calm as she" /></a>
+</center><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<center>
+<table summary="table of contents" border="0" >
+<tr><td class="toc">CHAPTER</td><td class="toc">&nbsp;</td><td class="toc">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#I_I_WHET_MY_FATHERS_SWORD">I</a></td><td class="toc">I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD<td align="right">1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#II_KNITS_UP_SOME_BROKEN_ENDS">II</a></td><td class="toc">KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS</td><td align="right">15</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#III_MY_ENEMY_SCORES_FIRST">III</a></td><td class="toc">MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST</td><td align="right">25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IV_MAY_BE_PASSED_OVER_LIGHTLY">IV</a></td><td class="toc">MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY</td><td align="right">36</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#V_I_LOST_WHAT_I_HAD_NEVER_GAINED">V</a></td><td class="toc">I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED</td><td align="right">47</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VI_RED_WRATH_MAY_HEAL_A_WOUND">VI</a></td><td class="toc">RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND</td><td align="right">60</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VII_MY_LADY_HATH_NO_PART">VII</a></td><td class="toc">MY LADY HATH NO PART</td><td align="right">75</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VIII_I_TASTE_THE_QUALITY_OF_MERCY">VIII</a></td><td class="toc">I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY</td><td align="right">88</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IX_A_GOLDEN_KEY_UNLOCKED_A_DOOR">IX</a></td><td class="toc">A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR</td><td align="right">98</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#X_A_FORLORN_HOPE_CAME_TO_GRIEF">X</a></td><td class="toc">A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF</td><td align="right">107</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XI_A_LIE_WAS_MADE_THE_VERY_TRUTH">XI</a></td><td class="toc">A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH</td><td align="right">114</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XII_THE_NEWS_CAME_TO_UNWELCOME_EARS">XII</a></td><td class="toc">THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS</td><td align="right">129</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIII_A_PILGRIMAGE_BEGINS">XIII</a></td><td class="toc">A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS</td><td align="right">141</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIV_THE_BARONET_PLAYED_ROUGE-ET-NOIR">XIV</a></td><td class="toc">THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR</td><td align="right">150</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XV_A_HATCHET_SINGS_A_MAN_TO_SLEEP">XV</a></td><td class="toc">A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP</td><td align="right">164</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVI_JENNIFER_THREW_A_MAIN_WITH_DEATH">XVI</a></td><td class="toc">JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH</td><td align="right">171</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVII_LOVE_TOOK_TOLL_OF_FRIENDSHIP">XVII</a></td><td class="toc">LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP</td><td align="right">183</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVIII_WE_HEAR_NEWS_FROM_THE_SOUTH">XVIII</a></td><td class="toc">WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH</td><td align="right">194</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIX_A_STUMBLING_HORSE_BROUGHT_TIDINGS">XIX</a></td><td class="toc">A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS</td><td align="right">207</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XX_WE_STRIVE_AS_MEN_TO_RUN_A_RACE">XX</a></td><td class="toc">WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE</td><td align="right">217</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXI_WE_KEPT_LENTEN_VIGILS_IN_TRINITYTIDE">XXI</a></td><td class="toc">WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE</td><td align="right">228</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXII_THE_FATES_GAVE_LARGESS_OF_DESPAIR">XXII</a></td><td class="toc">THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR</td><td align="right">235</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXIII_WE_KEPT_THE_FEAST_OF_BITTER_HERBS">XXIII</a></td><td class="toc">WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS</td><td align="right">251</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXIV_WE_FOUND_THE_SUNKEN_VALLEY">XXIV</a></td><td class="toc">WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY</td><td align="right">259</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXV_UNCANOOLA_TRAPPED_THE_GREAT_BEAR">XXV</a></td><td class="toc">UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR</td><td align="right">269</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVI_THE_CHARRED_STICK_FOR_A_GUIDE">XXVI</a></td><td class="toc">THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE</td><td align="right">279</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVII_A_KINGS_TROOPER_BECAME_A_WASTREL">XXVII</a></td><td class="toc">A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL</td><td align="right">287</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII_I_SADDLE_THE_BLACK_MARE">XXVIII</a></td><td class="toc">I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE</td><td align="right">296</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXIX_HAVING_DANCED_WE_PAY_THE_PIPER">XXIX</a></td><td class="toc">HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER</td><td align="right">309</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXX_EPHRAIM_YEATES_PRAYED_FOR_HIS_ENEMIES">XXX</a></td><td class="toc">EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES</td><td align="right">324</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXI_WE_MAKE_A_FORCED_MARCH">XXXI</a></td><td class="toc">WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH</td><td align="right">336</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXII_I_AM_BEDDED_IN_A_GARRET">XXXII</a></td><td class="toc">I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET</td><td align="right">351</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXIII_I_HEAR_CHANCEFUL_TIDINGS">XXXIII</a></td><td class="toc">I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS</td><td align="right">361</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXIV_I_MET_A_GREAT_LORD_AS_MAN_TO_MAN">XXXIV</a></td><td class="toc">I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN</td><td align="right">369</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXV_I_FIGHT_THE_DEVIL_WITH_FIRE">XXXV</a></td><td class="toc">I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE</td><td align="right">376</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXVI_I_RODE_POST_ON_THE_KINGS_BUSINESS">XXXVI</a></td><td class="toc">I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS</td><td align="right">382</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXVII_WHAT_BEFELL_AT_KINGS_CREEK">XXXVII</a></td><td class="toc">WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK</td><td align="right">395</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXVIII_WE_FIND_THE_GUN-MAKER">XXXVIII</a></td><td class="toc">WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER</td><td align="right">412</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXXIX_THE_THUNDER_OF_THE_CAPTAINS">XXXIX</a></td><td class="toc">THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS</td><td align="right">418</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XL_VAE_VICTIS">XL</a></td><td class="toc">VAE VICTIS</td><td align="right">432</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLI_I_PLAYED_THE_HOST_AT_MY_OWN_FIRESIDE">XLI</a></td><td class="toc">I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE</td><td align="right">446</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLII_MY_LORD_HAS_HIS_MARCHING_ORDERS">XLII</a></td><td class="toc">MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS</td><td align="right">454</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLIII_I_DRINK_A_DISH_OF_TEA">XLIII</a></td><td class="toc">I DRINK A DISH OF TEA</td><td align="right">460</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLIV_WE_COME_TO_THE_BEGINNING_OF_THE_END">XLIV</a></td><td class="toc">WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END</td><td align="right">470</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLV_WE_FIND_WHAT_WE_NEVER_SOUGHT">XLV</a></td><td class="toc">WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT</td><td align="right">480</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLVI_OUR_PIECE_MISSED_FIRE_AT_HARNDON_ACRES">XLVI</a></td><td class="toc">OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES</td><td align="right">488</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLVII_ARMS_AND_THE_MAN">XLVII</a></td><td class="toc">ARMS AND THE MAN</td><td align="right">505</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLVIII_WE_KEPT_TRYST_AT_APPLEBY">XLVIII</a></td><td class="toc">WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY</td><td align="right">517</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#XLIX_A_LAWYER_HATH_HIS_FEE">XLIX</a></td><td class="toc">A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE</td><td align="right">531</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#L_RICHARD_COVERDALES_DEBT_WAS_PAID">L</a></td><td class="toc">RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID</td><td align="right">549</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#LI_THE_GOOD_CAUSE_GAINS_A_CONVERT">LI</a></td><td class="toc">THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT</td><td align="right">562</td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="right"><a href="#LII_BRINGS_US_TO_THE_JOURNEYS_END">LII</a></td><td class="toc">BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END</td><td align="right">573</td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="I_I_WHET_MY_FATHERS_SWORD"></a><h2>CHAPTER I<br />IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD</h2>
+
+
+<br />
+
+<p>The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
+brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
+calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
+west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
+higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
+lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
+shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
+once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
+to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
+pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
+the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
+exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
+arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
+rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
+valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
+see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
+where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
+provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
+London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
+rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
+cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
+service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
+courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.</p>
+
+<p>Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
+had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
+in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
+and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
+had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
+than yesterweek&mdash;this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
+must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
+doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
+and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
+Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
+Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
+his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
+gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
+courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
+stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
+I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: &quot;At your
+service, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
+packet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
+captain in his Majesty's German Legion,&quot; he announced, with stern
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
+Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
+some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
+the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
+he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
+kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
+event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
+November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
+first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
+say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet,&quot; I
+demurred, when I had read the challenge. &quot;He spoke slightingly of a
+lady, and I did but&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your answer, Captain Ireton!&quot; quoth my youngster, curtly. &quot;I am not
+empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so fast, if you please,&quot; I rejoined. &quot;I have no wish to disappoint
+your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
+sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
+with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
+shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
+of any other breed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you can,&quot; he qualified. &quot;But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
+I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
+you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
+gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's wit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
+I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
+otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
+as well as I might.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
+presently a bit of cold deer's meat and some cakes of maize bread
+baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
+sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries of the Indian scuppernong, to
+wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
+mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
+cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.</p>
+
+<p>It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
+the day in Queensborough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
+post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
+in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
+harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
+as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
+Catawba.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
+take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer eyed me curiously. &quot;Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
+no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
+Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;De Kalb?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Again the curious eyeshot. &quot;Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
+though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
+about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I? What should I know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know a deal&mdash;or else the gossips lie most recklessly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
+other of the patriot side. What are they saying?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia&mdash;to see what
+you can see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
+the oath on either side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked vastly disappointed. &quot;But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
+to think twice in such a cause?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now God Save us, John Ireton!&quot; he burst out in a fine fervor of
+youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, &quot;I had never
+thought to hear your father's son say the like!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
+his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
+declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
+landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
+seat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer shrugged in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gilbert Stair&mdash;for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it&mdash;Gilbert
+Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
+this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
+course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
+skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
+and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
+Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
+him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
+private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laid a hand on his knee. &quot;Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
+Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
+rendezvous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
+he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
+some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Softly, my lad,&quot; I said; &quot;'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
+my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
+ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
+the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
+harder at his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
+powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
+again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
+to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and&mdash;and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
+stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
+its scabbard, I'll be bound.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less,&quot; he confessed,
+shamefacedly. &quot;'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
+blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
+little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
+order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
+and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
+blue should never look upon her face again with her good will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
+somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
+possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
+homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
+mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
+all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
+frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
+happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
+need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
+love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
+was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dost love her, Dick?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
+Master Wytheby's school.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
+then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
+would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
+the thing it is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
+leisure,&quot; said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
+meant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
+the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
+doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
+enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
+to go, or die of shame!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
+campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.</p>
+
+<p>By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
+apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure,&quot; he added. &quot;But it so
+happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
+to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
+Falconnet stood my friend&mdash;though now I bethink me, he did seem
+over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As how?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
+Falconnet was for having us make the duel <i>&agrave; outrance</i>. But that's
+beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
+serve him now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
+the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
+captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
+its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
+of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip&mdash;gossip about a tale
+which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
+grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
+hap in fencing with words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
+in passing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
+carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
+light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who should know that better than&mdash;&quot; I was fairly on the brink of
+betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. &quot;I care not
+if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before&mdash;and with a
+good swordsman now and then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anan?&quot; said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: &quot;But this
+toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
+lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
+own affairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
+asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
+she is sweet and fair and good to look upon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
+mayhap I can name her for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
+painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
+with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
+witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
+it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Curse him!&quot; he cried. &quot;And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
+Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. &quot;Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
+are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
+quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
+the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His words&mdash;his very words, Jack, if you love me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; the quarrel is mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God! it is not yours!&quot; he stormed, raging back and forth before the
+fire. &quot;What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
+daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you are going to fight for her!&quot; he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
+fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
+you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mayhap; but it is mine, too,&quot; he broke in, angrily. &quot;At all events,
+I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
+cause.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot; He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
+and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
+Falconnet's next friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
+may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
+shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
+is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
+Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
+as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
+he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
+outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
+I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you shall not, Jack,&quot; he asserted, stoutly. &quot;I must be a-gallop
+now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
+but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
+Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
+horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
+maples&mdash;watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
+of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
+somber reminders.</p>
+
+<p>I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
+Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
+chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
+Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
+battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.</p>
+
+<p>I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
+strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
+and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
+are in order against their time of using.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="II_KNITS_UP_SOME_BROKEN_ENDS"></a><h2>II<br />WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
+father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
+Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
+best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
+Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
+my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for &quot;home,&quot; as we called it in those
+days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
+guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
+home from garrison duty in the Canadas.</p>
+
+<p>Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
+wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
+less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
+good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
+down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
+that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
+less to my score than others had to theirs.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
+his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
+my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
+clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
+of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.</p>
+
+<p>As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
+not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
+lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
+purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
+the <i>jeunesse dor&eacute;e</i> of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
+rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
+was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time&mdash;and
+purpose&mdash;posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.</p>
+
+<p>Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
+not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
+comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
+the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
+merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
+when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.</p>
+
+<p>As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
+affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
+Carolina,&mdash;news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,&mdash;I
+should there and then have called the slayer to his account.</p>
+
+<p>How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
+been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the &quot;Regulators,&quot;
+as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
+figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
+the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
+this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
+and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
+of oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherers
+and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any
+honest gentleman to oppose them.</p>
+
+<p>What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken in
+arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth
+receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.
+With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and
+a few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated at
+the Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.</p>
+
+<p>When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had no
+heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and
+reward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw
+up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,
+and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, was
+lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old
+field-marshal on the Turkish frontier.</p>
+
+<p>To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches
+and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news
+traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in
+the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of
+the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and
+from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolina
+was still another year.</p>
+
+<p>What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trot
+thence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.
+Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long
+faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve
+as mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, with
+slow-match well alight for its firing.</p>
+
+<p>Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were already
+widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was
+that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into
+Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was
+made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration
+of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment
+by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was
+chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands
+the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.</p>
+
+<p>Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne
+of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest
+of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,
+in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father
+knew all the metes and bounds of it.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was
+told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when
+he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not
+yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to
+the son.</p>
+
+<p>It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert
+Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat
+at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with
+his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was
+Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.</p>
+
+<p>For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew
+not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and
+profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be
+minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish
+border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and
+swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on
+these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I
+became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of
+wrath.</p>
+
+<p>On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path
+that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path
+to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by
+time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy
+days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill
+glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up
+under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of
+blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.</p>
+
+<p>Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius&mdash;old when I
+had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients
+now&mdash;was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had
+been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that
+lay between, he knew me at once.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small
+portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks
+were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger
+Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,
+on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place,
+Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned
+deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,
+a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf
+torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>My Son:</i></p>
+
+<p>     <i>I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and
+     my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We
+     have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
+     to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
+     bequeath you my sword&mdash;'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
+     devise&mdash;and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
+     Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
+     cause of liberty.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Thy father,<br />
+          Roger Ireton.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
+heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
+summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
+learned what I have here set down of my father's end.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
+if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
+the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
+the bearings of the nearest patriot force.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
+for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
+light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
+invasion&mdash;so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
+Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
+in instant readiness for fight or flight.</p>
+
+<p>Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far
+from Lord Cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the Wateree,
+I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good
+reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
+embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
+Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
+and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
+Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
+She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
+women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
+lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
+for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
+moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
+proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.</p>
+
+<p>A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
+tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
+lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
+quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
+of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
+bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
+tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
+bejeweled&mdash;overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.</p>
+
+<p>Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
+act he turned, and then I saw his face&mdash;saw and recognized it though
+nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
+Richard Coverdale.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So!&quot; thought I. &quot;My time has come at last.&quot; And while I was yet turning
+over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
+and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
+would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
+page here for you.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!&quot; cried the younger of the twain;
+and then I took two strides to front him fairly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!&quot; I said; and,
+lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
+like an ox in the shambles.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="III_MY_ENEMY_SCORES_FIRST"></a><h2>III<br />IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
+of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
+the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.</p>
+
+<p>After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful
+enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his
+second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken
+with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one
+of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried
+shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.</p>
+
+<p>It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool
+and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which
+washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink
+to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the
+bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the
+fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing. On the right the river,
+late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the
+waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of
+our horses there were none. Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of
+nature's morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught
+remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the
+countryside. Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for
+Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot
+tempest of ours,&quot; he said. &quot;But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial
+savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly. The
+post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel
+Tarleton's doings. 'Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln's
+reinforcements come too late. They gave battle but faint-heartedly,
+being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and
+begged for quarter&mdash;begged, and were cut down as they stood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Faugh!&quot; said I. &quot;That is but hangman's work. And yet in London I heard
+that this same Colonel Tarleton was with Lord Howe in Philadelphia and
+was made much of by the ladies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer's laugh was neither mirthful nor pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a weakness of the sex,&quot; he scoffed. &quot;The women have a fondness for
+a man with a dash of the brute in him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed also, but without bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say it feelingly. Do you speak by the book?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all
+manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this
+baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but
+a pattern of his brutal colonel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I put two and two together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, surely. Gilbert Stair keeps open house for any and all of the
+winning hand, as I told you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thought of this unspoiled young maiden having aught to do with such
+a thrice-accursed despoiler of women made my blood boil afresh; and in
+the heat of it I let my secret slip, or rather some small part of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir Francis had ever a sure hand with the women,&quot; I said; and then I
+could have bitten my masterless tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&quot; queried Jennifer. &quot;Then this is not your first knowing of him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot; So much I said and no more.</p>
+
+<p>We rode on in silence for a little space, and then my youthling must
+needs break out again in fresh beseechings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me what you know of him, and what it was he said of Madge,&quot; he
+entreated. &quot;You can't deny me now, Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has
+been.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him
+through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all
+men&mdash;and all women, as well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God speed you,&quot; quoth my loyal ally. &quot;I knew not your quarrel with him
+was so bitter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is to the death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I divined what he would say and broke in upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I
+know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be
+sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have
+seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old
+regiment of the Blues.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Content yourself,&quot; said my young Hotspur, grandly. &quot;If you spare him he
+shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
+know not what it was he said.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
+hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indifferent well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
+hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
+guinea at ten paces.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
+rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
+came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
+Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
+cases as he drew rein.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Ware the wood!&quot; he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
+spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
+deploying into the road as to surround us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now who are these?&quot; I asked; &quot;friends or foes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
+Tories&mdash;the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
+since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye,&mdash;standing, if need be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then at them, in God's name. Charge!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my
+old field-marshal's maxim, <i>Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu
+zerschmettern</i>; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did
+strike both first and hard.</p>
+
+<p>A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to
+guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.
+In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered
+instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we
+came to the steel.</p>
+
+<p>It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced
+blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the
+half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me
+room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to
+death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Over with you!&quot; I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him
+down with a great scythe handled as a sword.</p>
+
+<p>Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for
+the race beyond. When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were
+safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.</p>
+
+<p>There was no cost worth counting. A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me,
+and the back of Jennifer's sword hand scored lightly across by another
+of the random missiles summed up our woundings. Dick whipped out his
+kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if
+any Tory cared to follow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, Jack! I owe you one to keep and one to pay back,&quot; quoth my
+youngster, warmly. &quot;I never saw a swordsman till this day!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn
+them. And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools. The
+two with swords had little wit to use them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, come!&quot; said he. &quot;I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.
+If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach
+me some of these 'mere tricks' of yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick, you passed this way an hour ago; was that breastwork in the road
+then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a stick of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then we may dare say our volunteer captain fights unwillingly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How so?&quot; he demanded, being much too straightforward himself to suspect
+duplicity in others.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis plain enough. This was a trap, meant to stop or delay us, and I'll
+wager high it was the baronet who set and baited it. It would please him
+well to be able to say what our failure to come would give him warrant
+for. Let us gallop a bit, lest we be late and so play into his hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer smiled grimly and gave his horse the rein. &quot;I think you'd
+charge the Fall of Man to him if that would give you better leave to
+kill him. I'd hate to own you for my enemy, John Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous
+under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking
+up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton,
+fair of skin and ruddy of face.</p>
+
+<p>If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment
+at its failure. His face, dark and inscrutable as it always was, was
+made more sinister by the plasters knitting up his broken cheek, but I
+was right glad to make sure that my blow had spared his eyes. Richly as
+he deserved his fate, I thought it would be ill to think on afterward
+that I had had him at a disadvantage of my own making.</p>
+
+<p>There was little time wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us
+he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to
+Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring
+and balancing of weapons, and then Richard came back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and
+is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords
+which he offers. Will you change your terms?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; I am content to fight with my own weapon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer nodded. &quot;So I told him.&quot; And then: &quot;There was no surgeon to be
+had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.
+Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings
+to fight without one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the devil with their hairsplittings!&quot; said I. &quot;Let us have done with
+them and be at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose
+the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to
+give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm
+which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my
+own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade,
+straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who
+strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the
+plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but
+devilish.</p>
+
+<p>The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I
+stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied
+smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied
+to Richard Coverdale nine years agone,&quot; said I; and then I signed
+Jennifer to give the word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Attention, gentlemen! On guard!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard
+another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a
+bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I
+heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and
+the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at
+me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.</p>
+
+<p>Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that
+he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal
+well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my
+advantage he had pricked me lightly with that extra inch of slender
+point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier
+weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and
+lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should
+have him.</p>
+
+<p>Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for
+on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well
+cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in
+my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of
+hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.</p>
+
+<p>I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did
+likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a
+hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.</p>
+
+<p>In the very act&mdash;'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
+to stay her from riding fair between us&mdash;I felt the hot-wire prick of
+the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
+stood.</p>
+
+<p>Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
+hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
+fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
+through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
+full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: &quot;'Twas most unfortunate and I
+do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
+point. Can I say more?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
+aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
+glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
+blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
+with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="IV_MAY_BE_PASSED_OVER_LIGHTLY"></a><h2>IV<br />WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY</h2>
+
+
+<br />
+
+<p>When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
+in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
+oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
+shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
+soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
+I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
+counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
+faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
+hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
+boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
+or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.</p>
+
+<p>At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
+an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
+fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
+and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
+on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
+David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
+softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.</p>
+
+<p>I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
+opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
+stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
+great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
+been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.</p>
+
+<p>Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
+a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
+should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
+of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.</p>
+
+<p>She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the
+sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,
+with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one
+that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action;
+but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April
+sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting
+the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made
+sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles
+scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking
+lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look
+of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in
+the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held
+the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple,
+care-free dressing of it at a time when <i>les grandes dames</i> were
+frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of
+glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish
+beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old
+field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand
+in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of
+them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and
+furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.</p>
+
+<p>What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the
+subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be
+wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for
+the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her
+and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in
+my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in
+earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well
+worth any penalty.</p>
+
+<p>At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and
+stood beside me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton,&quot; she said; and in all the
+thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her
+voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.
+&quot;They say I am good only to fetch and carry&mdash;may I fetch you anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I
+said: &quot;Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile
+like that she had flung to Falconnet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Merci! mon Capitaine</i>,&quot; she said; and for all my wincings under the
+sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French
+of it. And then she added: &quot;Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's
+officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas no compliment,&quot; I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked
+where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the
+answer to both questions.</p>
+
+<p>In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess,
+steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because
+there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard
+Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with
+Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the
+German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from
+me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should
+thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my
+enemy and his second to share the burden of me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But your father?&quot; I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to
+my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your
+wound dressed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to
+hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as
+little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field,
+and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt,&quot; she declared, replacing the
+wrappings with deft fingers. &quot;How came you to go about picking a quarrel
+with Sir Francis?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas not of my seeking,&quot; I returned, and then I could have cursed my
+foolish tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the
+town, and that says&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it
+stand so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this
+unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to
+answer her. But I could not let it go thus.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England,&quot; said I, hoping by this to
+turn her safe aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, that I may not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the
+telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for
+jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of
+her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on
+drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and
+yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any
+tender-hearted woman might.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There,&quot; she said; &quot;'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are
+glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it
+heals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how long will that be, think you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for
+your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from
+lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again.
+When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands,
+and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she,
+or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius,
+and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound.
+From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from
+Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually
+going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.</p>
+
+<p>Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love
+me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange
+that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his
+unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other
+things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir
+Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and
+going.</p>
+
+<p>But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was
+the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's
+loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had
+finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's
+militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory
+stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.</p>
+
+<p>With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of
+the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and
+with her cheeks aflame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which,
+failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!&quot; she cried. &quot;Was
+it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending
+this headstrong boy to his death?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had
+sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found
+no thong to cut so deep.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God help me!&quot; I groaned. &quot;Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he is not dead,&quot; she confessed, relenting a little. &quot;But he has the
+baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas
+disagreement with Sir Francis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but
+the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for
+the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad
+enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you speak, sir?&quot; she snapped, flying out at me in a passion
+for my lack of words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me
+ungenerous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon
+for calling my father's guest hard names.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it
+was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never
+heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be
+on the forgiving hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other
+could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same
+breath.&quot; Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and
+she sighed and said: &quot;Poor Dick!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the
+sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that
+curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must
+straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I
+should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: &quot;He loves you well,
+Mistress Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or
+loving; I could not tell which it was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of
+mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy
+disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she
+laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you do amuse me mightily, <i>mon Capitaine</i>,&quot; she cried. &quot;I do
+protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?&quot; I asked, glad of any
+excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great
+world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should
+tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she
+came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished
+suddenly and she spoke softly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always
+to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of
+practice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most
+highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had
+given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me
+could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
+I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
+little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.</p>
+
+<p>From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
+those same Huguenot <i>&eacute;migr&eacute;s</i>; and when I looked not at her I could
+speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
+looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
+knew not always what it was I said.</p>
+
+<p>After a time&mdash;'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
+candles&mdash;she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
+struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
+I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
+this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
+loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="V_I_LOST_WHAT_I_HAD_NEVER_GAINED"></a><h2>V<br />HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED</h2>
+
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
+sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
+oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
+which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
+loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
+passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
+cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
+dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely&mdash;nay, held me altogether
+blameless, as I was not.</p>
+
+<p>Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
+hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
+review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
+of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
+comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
+she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
+elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.</p>
+
+<p>You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
+frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
+turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
+But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
+jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.</p>
+
+<p>In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
+sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
+father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
+that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
+she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
+telling me na&iuml;vely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
+save only Richard Jennifer.</p>
+
+<p>And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though
+never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this
+point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she
+would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she
+knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it
+were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.</p>
+
+<p>Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of
+these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of
+friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So
+long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come
+to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I
+thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For
+love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and
+once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or
+cunningly devised.</p>
+
+<p>With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed
+slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world
+without&mdash;if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a
+syllable to me&mdash;and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond
+the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not
+ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and
+angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride
+took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing
+me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for
+any useful thing.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised
+me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as
+was her wont when I grew restive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be
+about it, Monsieur Impetuous?&quot; she cried. &quot;<i>Fi donc!</i> you'd try the
+patience of a saint!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which you are not,&quot; I ventured. &quot;But truly, Margery, I am growing
+stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know.
+Besides&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;I'll say whatever you would have me say&mdash;so it be not the
+truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll have you say nothing until you sit down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the
+window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at
+my feet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now you may go on,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not told me what you would have me say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The truth,&quot; she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'&quot;What is truth,&quot; said jesting Pilate,'&quot; I quoted. &quot;Why do you suppose
+my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and
+place?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so
+impatient to be gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide
+inactive when duty calls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is not the whole truth,&quot; she said, half absently. &quot;You think you
+are unwelcome here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be
+relieved when he is safely quit of me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John,&quot; she retorted, giving me
+back my own words. &quot;Has ever word been brought you that he would speed
+your parting?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never
+seen his face, as yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and
+you are Roger Ireton's son.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the
+unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my
+seeking&mdash;this asylum in his house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it, then?&mdash;besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from me and said: &quot;He is my father's factor and man of
+affairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught
+to this parchment-faced&mdash;to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your
+father, or any.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father
+from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among
+the rebels?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed&mdash;oh, pardon me again, I
+pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was
+that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was
+too fiercely mad to bandy words with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What made you mad, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas his threat to me&mdash;to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you
+greatly blame me, Margery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the
+more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for
+speaking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father has had little peace since coming here,&quot; she said, at length.
+&quot;He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
+but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
+smiled within.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is the way of all the world in war-time, <i>ma petite</i>. A partizan
+may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
+answering flash.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell him so!&quot; she cried. &quot;I tell him always that the king will have
+his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
+come and quarter on us&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
+in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
+yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked me fairly in the eye. &quot;You should be the last to remind me of
+my treason, Monsieur John.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from me again. &quot;How can it well be less than treason?&quot;
+Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. &quot;You must
+not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
+saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
+have told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
+and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
+Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
+I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Oh</i>!&quot; The little exclamation was of pure delight. &quot;Then they were all
+mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
+for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
+time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
+greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
+fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
+briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
+might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, little one,&quot; I said; &quot;there has been no mistake. For their own
+purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de
+Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.
+I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and
+the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am
+Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my
+father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now who is fierce?&quot; she cried. And then, like lightning: &quot;Will you
+raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know I will not,&quot; I protested, so gravely that she laughed again,
+though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew
+not, in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur
+John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age.&quot; Then she
+sobered quickly and added this: &quot;And yet I fear that this is what my
+father fears.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or
+that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine
+enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause
+to dread me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough,&quot; she added.</p>
+
+<p>I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly
+out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my
+father's house&mdash;or rather in the house that was my father's. But that
+was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to
+think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's,
+certainly; but 'twas never mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet&mdash;and yet it should be yours, John Ireton.&quot; She said it bravely,
+with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides
+to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard
+Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay.
+After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was
+in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them
+shine like stars.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and
+I could not say it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend&mdash;as I am his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you?&quot; she queried. &quot;Were you my friend, as well, is this as you
+would have it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great
+oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding
+in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her
+unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them
+was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode
+as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of
+his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner
+born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the
+jog-trot of his beast.</p>
+
+<p>I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her,
+these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not
+speak until they came so near that I could make them out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.
+And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend
+to Dick did I not&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to
+me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance
+on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some
+babblement of voices, though not the words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go down,&quot; she said. &quot;'Tis company come, and my father is away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had
+thought her gone&mdash;gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the
+factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I
+had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other,
+Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have
+been hoping there was no other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if I say there may be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously
+to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margery, come hither where I may see you.&quot; And when she stood before me
+like a bidden child: &quot;Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive
+she fell a-laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What impudence!&quot; she cried. &quot;<i>Ma foi</i>! You should borrow P&egrave;re
+Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.
+But not before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But still I pressed her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me, Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She tossed her head and would not look at me. &quot;Dick Jennifer is but a
+boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a soldier.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sickness in my heart became a fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place
+was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have
+passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or
+mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only
+knew&mdash;if I dared tell you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.
+She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though
+he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to
+put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I
+shall not stay to listen, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her
+hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me
+mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her
+answer came. And this is what she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis
+Falconnet asked me to marry him. I&mdash;I hope you do feel better, Captain
+Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me
+to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VI_RED_WRATH_MAY_HEAL_A_WOUND"></a><h2>VI<br />SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the
+factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and
+sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would
+curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby
+Hundred&mdash;indeed, I saw them daily from my window&mdash;and Darius would be
+telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the
+south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have
+told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm,
+pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her
+lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how
+to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed&mdash;knew and raged afresh at my own
+impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of
+this devil.</p>
+
+<p>Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered
+love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call
+aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more
+downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at
+the mercy of this fiend.</p>
+
+<p>I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift&mdash;some
+winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well
+this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than
+handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and
+soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power
+of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will
+for that which he was not.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart
+from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity
+or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed
+after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep
+the scale from tipping&mdash;all were as one to him, or to the Francis
+Falconnet I knew.</p>
+
+<p>And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love
+would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce
+desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood;
+but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to
+Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman
+volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might
+brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us
+in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and
+grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless
+baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his
+fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.</p>
+
+<p>And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that
+her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But
+there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer
+captain with the winning way was of the <i>haute noblesse</i>, and he could
+make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you
+may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump
+cards to play against the absent lover.</p>
+
+<p>So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days&mdash;the first in
+many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky
+was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness
+followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was
+this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and
+lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the
+good priest known to me.</p>
+
+<p>Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I
+have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a
+friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of
+men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me
+at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A truly sweet young demoiselle,&quot; he said, by way of foreword, no sooner
+was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this
+text I grew to know and love him.</p>
+
+<p>He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and
+features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as
+Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not
+tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist
+with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of
+the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white
+hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely
+chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far
+older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among
+the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.</p>
+
+<p>I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness,&quot;
+I ventured, when all was said. &quot;'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of
+parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are
+but savages, as they were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this he smiled and shook his head. <i>&quot;Non, Monsieur</i>, not so. You are
+a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. <i>Mais, mon ami</i>,
+they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are
+far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and
+faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;I've read about those noble ones,&quot; I said. &quot;'Twas in a book
+called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
+youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
+when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
+they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes; there has been much of that,&quot; he sighed. &quot;But you must
+confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
+them, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
+interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
+dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
+telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
+north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
+thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
+bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
+Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
+unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
+his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
+Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
+take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
+army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
+of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
+and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
+naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
+might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.</p>
+
+<p>As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
+must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
+was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
+two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
+Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
+well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
+and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
+waiting for some messenger from the south.</p>
+
+<p>I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
+more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the
+news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I go and come through all this borderland,&quot; he said, when I had asked
+him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, &quot;but it was mam'selle's
+message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and
+I would journey far to see her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely
+Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>His look forgave the protest in the words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet
+I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this
+same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But how&mdash;I do not understand how that can be,&quot; I stammered. &quot;Surely,
+she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that
+is&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain
+Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I
+think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her
+child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave
+his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he
+kept it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the
+terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu.
+The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in
+Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. &quot;The time has not yet passed,&quot;
+he said, gently. &quot;I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither,
+hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in
+hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said
+at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how
+perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he
+rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess
+the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to
+that&mdash;her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her
+sending for the priest&mdash;the madness of my love for her was as naught
+compared to that anger which seized and racked me.</p>
+
+<p>I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
+grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
+keen to suffer at the end.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
+the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
+it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
+call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
+and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
+core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
+and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
+candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
+doffed, and <i>sabretaches</i> well in front. &quot;A man full-grown&mdash;a soldier,&quot;
+she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.</p>
+
+<p>From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
+So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
+before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
+to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
+to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
+side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!</p>
+
+<p>What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
+thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard&mdash;and
+later on, for Margery herself&mdash;possessed me? In which of these hot
+fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
+that it came at length&mdash;a thought and plan full-grown at birth&mdash;I do
+know.</p>
+
+<p>The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
+nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
+and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
+the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
+myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.</p>
+
+<p>With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
+might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
+the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
+as with the strength of ten.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
+day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
+candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks,
+you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains&mdash;the which I had. His
+place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew
+no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected,
+and that some air of mystery was abroad.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a
+thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I
+drank a second cup of wine,&mdash;'twas old madeira of my father's
+laying-in,&mdash;and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not
+yield it.</p>
+
+<p>It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan,
+would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the
+weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone
+bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a
+candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken
+clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and
+found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.</p>
+
+<p>It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in
+the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done
+the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my
+knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me
+strength to break his neck across it.</p>
+
+<p>At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the
+window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the
+front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them,
+I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.</p>
+
+<p>The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the
+oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere
+of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal,
+though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for
+silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling
+mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition&mdash;old as man, for
+aught I know&mdash;of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I
+laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my
+father's roof within the compass of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin
+forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I
+heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.
+Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
+For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
+remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
+bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
+become fiercely debatable.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
+hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
+looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
+seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
+black beneath my window.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
+sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
+sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
+words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
+and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
+the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So!&quot; I thought; &quot;but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
+a scantly guested wedding.&quot; And then I raged within again to think of
+how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
+the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
+broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
+door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
+braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
+was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
+what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
+enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
+chance of interruption.</p>
+
+<p>I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
+behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
+not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
+know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
+red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
+me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
+birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
+nor weakness&mdash;knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
+task to do and I would do it.</p>
+
+<p>My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
+it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
+had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
+vigilance.</p>
+
+<p>I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
+in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
+been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
+solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
+whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt! Who goes there?&quot; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A friend,&quot; said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
+of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God, I think you lie,&quot; he said; and after that he said no more, for
+he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to
+scant his breath for shoutings.</p>
+
+<p>It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too
+hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do&mdash;or seek to
+do&mdash;his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so
+it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs&mdash;and
+when I rose he rose not with me.</p>
+
+<p>With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to
+knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen
+at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a
+pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the
+nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from
+within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper's
+oath.</p>
+
+<p>I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some
+foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests,
+no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it,
+and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.
+Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I
+have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The
+other two were strangers.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VII_MY_LADY_HATH_NO_PART"></a><h2>VII<br />IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in
+upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would
+have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the
+midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay
+and listen.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in
+years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and
+garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of
+foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not
+old Roger's son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same,&quot; said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glass
+again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him&mdash;'twas some
+half-score years ago, though, come to think&mdash;he was a lieutenant in the
+Royal Scots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mine enemy nodded. &quot;So he was. But afterward he cut the service and
+levanted to the Continent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about
+him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would
+stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they
+told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,
+and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him
+she shrieked and cried out, '<i>Il est le p&egrave;re aux t&ecirc;tes rondes, lui-m&ecirc;me!
+Le portez-vous dehors!</i>' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!
+ha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred
+cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than
+&quot;roundhead&quot; for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more
+because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,
+and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be
+kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on
+and listened with the better grace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?&quot; 'Twas not the grizzled jester
+who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.</p>
+
+<p>Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned
+to Gilbert Stair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?&quot; he said, passing the question on.</p>
+
+<p>At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,
+too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the
+reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's
+father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its
+simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray
+eyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the
+mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him
+that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew
+not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her
+paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched
+the weak chin to a hair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came&mdash;how should I know?&quot; he
+quavered. &quot;Appleby Hundred is mine&mdash;mine, I tell you! His title was well
+hanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant
+outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel
+Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tis
+likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come
+into his own again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, aye; sure enough,&quot; quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle
+afresh. And then: &quot;Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he
+came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie in
+words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached
+for special duty.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A spy!&quot; roared the jester. &quot;And yet you haven't hanged him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. &quot;All in good time, my dear
+Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.
+Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;
+'twas about a woman&mdash;oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assure
+you!&quot;&mdash;this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. &quot;He was keen upon
+me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking
+he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. &quot;But you will hang him, Sir
+Francis? You've promised that, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this
+little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had
+what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him
+here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.
+Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then&quot;&mdash;this
+to the master of Appleby Hundred&mdash;&quot;then your title will be well quieted,
+Mr. Stair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till
+the bottles reeled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say, Sir Frank, that's good&mdash;damned good! So you have him crimped
+here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
+his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
+If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
+peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The baronet smiled and said: &quot;I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
+had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
+door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
+that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
+business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
+Falconnet who gave the toast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's to our bully redskins and their king&mdash;How do you call him,
+Captain Stuart? Ocon&mdash;Ocona&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
+better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
+this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.&mdash;er&mdash;ah&mdash;Pengarden. This same
+old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
+you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
+ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Lord!&quot; groaned Falconnet. &quot;I say, Captain, drown the names in the
+wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
+I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
+Captain Damar&eacute;, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
+savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
+placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
+king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
+in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
+learn, he was a man for us to fear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis carried through at last,&quot; he went on, when the toast was drunk.
+And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. &quot;This business will
+not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was Falconnet who answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
+your news, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailing
+in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to
+dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest with
+my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border
+settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met
+with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known
+him. Then I heard the baronet say:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But yet the thing is done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after
+which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And
+that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
+Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
+Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke
+in upon it shrilly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!&quot; he protested, starting from
+his chair. &quot;'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,&mdash;you know it
+well, Sir Francis,&mdash;stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel
+militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the captain put him down in brief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tis
+hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at
+best&mdash;nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest
+in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend&mdash;mind you, as a friend&mdash;I
+would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord's
+commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his &quot;yes&quot; dumbly
+like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too
+violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what
+double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely
+something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.</p>
+
+<p>So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways
+and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular
+orders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll have them from headquarters direct,&quot; said Stuart. &quot;Oconostota
+will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
+will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Falconnet's oath was of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
+necks. The country is alive with rebels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
+route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
+partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
+horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
+under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
+prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.</p>
+
+<p>But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
+within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
+factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
+subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
+gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
+drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
+powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
+map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
+Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.</p>
+
+<p>At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what
+this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the
+frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us
+knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men were
+planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be
+done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led
+by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the
+over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a
+junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk
+and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.</p>
+
+<p>It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of
+any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought
+upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay
+before me.</p>
+
+<p>The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.</p>
+
+<p>But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task
+of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking
+the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was
+nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region
+at the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man for
+self-defense?</p>
+
+<p>At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would
+know how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'd
+find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to
+this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick before
+the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the
+half-score miles to Jennifer House.</p>
+
+<p>Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should
+last&mdash;the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which
+again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I
+would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second
+thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge
+of the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking the
+time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set
+some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the
+convoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedient
+seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught
+and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.</p>
+
+<p>So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and
+glare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers and
+the bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. If
+I could make a shift to rob them of this map&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to
+take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and
+the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon
+their figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and the
+captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he
+was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw
+not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.</p>
+
+<p>My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within
+and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I
+might snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I
+had come.</p>
+
+<p>So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching
+hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost
+my grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the wooden
+shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling
+the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs
+flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding
+figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I
+had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the
+night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon
+horse-holder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!&quot; he cried; and when he had no answer,
+put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,
+while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious
+scrap of parchment in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattered
+down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by
+my doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but
+tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I
+had it safe.</p>
+
+<p>You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what
+followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little
+stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now
+to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain
+hung in air and sought his foothold.</p>
+
+<p>With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
+When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it
+tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged
+upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through
+the gaping doorway.</p>
+
+<p>I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with the
+point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the
+oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the
+saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till
+the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently
+by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with
+the sword at the man upon his back.</p>
+
+<p>It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust
+he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
+Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the
+night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon
+shot to crush my skull.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VIII_I_TASTE_THE_QUALITY_OF_MERCY"></a><h2>VIII<br />IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will
+tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on
+the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to
+give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my
+captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and
+feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and
+aching from their buffetings.</p>
+
+<p>How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this
+harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could
+not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung
+pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses
+tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.</p>
+
+<p>The scene within the great fore-room of the house had been shifted, too.
+A sentry was pacing back and forth before the door&mdash;a Hessian grenadier
+by the size and shako of him; and when the two trooper bailiffs thrust
+me in, and I had winked and blinked my eyes accustomed to the
+candle-light, I saw the table had been swept of its bottles and glasses,
+and around it, sitting as in council, were some half-score officers of
+the British light-horse with their colonel at the head.</p>
+
+<p>As it chanced, this was my first sight near at hand of that British
+commander whose name in after years the patriot mothers spoke to fright
+their children. He did not look a monster. As I recall him now, he was a
+short, square-bodied man, younger by some years than myself, and yet
+with an old campaigner's head well set upon aggressive shoulders. His
+eyes were black and ferrety; and his face, well seasoned by the Carolina
+sun, was swart as any Arab's. A man, I thought, who could be
+gentle-harsh or harsh-revengeful, as the mood should prompt; who could
+make well-turned courtier compliments to a lady and damn a trooper in
+the self-same breath.</p>
+
+<p>This was that Colonel Banastre Tarleton who gave no quarter to
+surrendered men; and when I looked into the sloe-black eyes I saw in
+them for me a waiting gibbet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So!&quot; he rapped out, when I was haled before him. &quot;You're the spying
+rebel captain, eh? Are you alive enough to hang?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His lack of courtesy rasped so sorely that I must needs give place to
+wrath and answer sharply that there was small doubt of it, since I could
+stand and curse him.</p>
+
+<p>He scowled at that and cursed me back again as heartily as any
+fishwife. Then suddenly he changed his tune.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
+loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
+die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said it would, most surely.</p>
+
+<p>He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
+the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
+the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
+think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
+the midst.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!&quot; he swore. &quot;You rebels are
+all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
+Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
+the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If that is your last word&mdash;But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
+over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It needs not an hour nor a minute,&quot; I replied. &quot;If I knew aught about
+the Continental army&mdash;which I do not&mdash;I'd see you hanged in your own
+stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
+marvel greatly&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At what?&quot; he cut in rudely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
+straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
+'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
+sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.</p>
+
+<p>While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
+look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
+without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
+offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
+chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
+shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
+and then of apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
+ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
+and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
+older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
+pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
+niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
+out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure of a man behind her; a man I
+guessed in jealous wrath to be the baronet&mdash;a reasonless suspicion,
+since the volunteer captain would certainly have made his presence known
+when his colonel had called for him. But while my heart was yet afire my
+lady moved aside as if to have a better sight of us below; and then I
+saw it was the priest behind her.</p>
+
+<p>While I was watching her, and we were waiting yet upon the
+aide-de-camp's return, there was a stir without, and when it reached the
+door the sentry challenged. Some confab followed, and I overheard enough
+to tell me that a scouting party had come in, bringing a prisoner. The
+colonel bade me stand aside, and passed the word to fetch the prisoner
+before him. When the thing was done I set my teeth upon a groan. For it
+was Richard Jennifer.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, he did not single me out among the bystanders, being fresh come
+from the night without to the glare of candle-light within; and while
+the swart-faced colonel plied him with questions I had a chance to look
+him up and down. Though his arm was still in its sling, he was seemingly
+the better of his wound. There was a glow of health and strength
+returning in cheek and eye, and I thought him handsomer than ever what
+time he stood forth boldly and fronted down the bullying colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing the Jennifer stock and its fine scorn of subterfuge, I feared it
+would go hard with Richard; and so, indeed, it had gone, lacking a word
+in season from an enemy. When Tarleton would have made him choose
+between the taking of the king's oath and captivity in the hulks at
+Charleston, a burly Hessian captain at the table spoke the word in
+season.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Verdammt!</i> mine Colonel; I vill know dis Mr. Yennifer. He is a prave
+yoong schalavags, and he is not gone out mit der rebels. Give him to me
+for mine plunders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel laughed and showed his teeth. Having one man to hang he
+could afford to be lenient with another.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What will you do with him, Captain Lauswoulter? By the look of him he'd
+make but indifferent sausage-meat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Vat shall I do mit him? I shall make him mine best bows and send him
+home, py Gott! Ve did had some liddle troubles mit der cards, and ven
+mine foot was slipped on dis <i>verdammt</i> grease-grass, he did not run me
+t'rough so like he might.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh; an affair of honor? Well, we'll count that in his favor. Take him
+away, Trelawny, and quarter yourself and twenty men upon him at Jennifer
+House. You have your parole, Mr. Jennifer; but by the Lord, if you break
+it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
+ridge-pole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
+had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
+bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.</p>
+
+<p>Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
+and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
+seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
+in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
+and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
+as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
+aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
+and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
+was not yet in from posting out the sentries.</p>
+
+<p>I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
+that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
+to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
+not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
+hear in brief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
+time,&quot; he began. &quot;'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
+baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
+within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
+know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made so sure that I should hang in any case that it seemed foolish to
+answer, and so I saved my breath. Withal he was the terror of our
+Southland, this tyrant colonel gave me time to consider; and while he
+waited, grim and silent, the candles on the table guttered and ran down,
+and the dim light failed till I could no longer see the face of her I
+loved framed in the archway of the stair.</p>
+
+<p>I thought it hard that I had seen my last of her sweet face thus through
+thickening shadows, as a dream might fade. Nevertheless, I would be glad
+that I had seen her thus, since otherwise, I thought, I must have gone
+without this last or any other sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>It was while I was still straining my eyes for one more glimpse of her,
+and while the court room silence deepened dense upon us like the
+shadows, that Colonel Tarleton signed to those who guarded me. A hand
+was laid upon my shoulder, but when I would have turned to go with them
+a woman's cry cut sharp into the stillness. Then, before any one could
+say a word or think a thought, my dauntless little lady stood beside me,
+her eyes alight and all her glorious beauty heightened in a blaze of
+generous emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For shame! Colonel Tarleton,&quot; she cried. &quot;Do you come thus into my
+father's house and take a wounded guest and hang him? You say he is a
+spy, but that he can not be, for he has lain abed in this same house a
+month or more. You shall not hang him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this there was a mighty stir about the table, as you may guess; and
+some would smile, and some would snuff the candles for a better sight of
+her sweet face. And through it all, the while my heart went near to
+bursting at this fresh proof of her most fearless loyalty, I ground my
+teeth in wrath that all those men should look their fill and say by wink
+and nod and covert smile that this were somewhat more than hostess
+loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the colonel's mocking smile that lashed me sharpest; his
+smile and what he said; and yet not that so much as what he left to be
+inferred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha! How is this, Mistress Margery? Do you keep open house for the
+king's enemies? That spells treason, my dear young lady, and hath an
+ugly look for you, besides.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It should have no look at all, save that of hospitality, sir,&quot; she
+countered, bravely. &quot;Surely I may plead for justice to a wounded man who
+was, and is, my father's guest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet he is a spy, and spies must hang.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is no spy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel's bow made but a mock of true politeness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should not make me contradict a lady, Mistress Margery. 'Tis
+evident you have not all his confidence. He was captured red-handed in
+the act at yonder window, listening to that which he may never know and
+live to prate about. Besides, he killed a sentry for his chance to
+listen, and for that I'd hang him if he were my own father's guest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So much he said as mild as if he had not left his reading of the law to
+figure in our annals as King George's butcher. Then in a sudden gust of
+rage he turned upon the priest, cursing him brutally and threatening
+vengeance for his bringing of the lady to the court room.</p>
+
+<p>My brave one stood a moment, shocked as she had warrant for. Then,
+before the priest or I or any one could stop her, she ran to throw
+herself upon her knees at Colonel Tarleton's feet&mdash;to kneel and plead
+for me as I would gladly have died a thousand deaths rather than have
+her plead; for life for me, or if not that, at least for some brief
+respite that the priest might shrive me.</p>
+
+<p>And in the end she won the respite, though I did think it far too dearly
+bought. When he granted it the colonel lifted her and took her hand,
+bowing low over it with courtly deference. &quot;For your sake, Mistress
+Margery, it shall be put off till morning,&quot; he said; then gave the
+order: At dawn they would march me out and hang me, and I would best be
+ready. For later than the sunrise of a new day the king himself might
+not delay my taking off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know too much, my cursing Captain,&quot; was his parting word. &quot;Were it
+not for Mistress Margery and my promise, you should not keep the breath
+to tell it over night.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="IX_A_GOLDEN_KEY_UNLOCKED_A_DOOR"></a><h2>IX<br />HOW A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that
+young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet's second
+in the duel. Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep
+my own room for the night. I had expected manacles and a roommate guard
+at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both. When he had me
+safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back
+and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the
+window from below, and so left me.</p>
+
+<p>There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars. What
+with the night's adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped
+on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may
+well suppose. For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or
+passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their
+pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.</p>
+
+<p>So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my
+lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking
+that the respite bought by my sweet lady's humbling was more dearly
+bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and
+tree without this interval of waiting.</p>
+
+<p>To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came. He was a
+good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he
+would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of
+praise and love. For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so
+sure and near that all the air was growing chill and lifeless at its
+presence, he was a ready help in time of need. If I were &quot;heretic&quot; to
+him, I swear I knew it not for aught he said or did; and though I
+trusted that when my time was come I should stand forth with some small
+simple-hearted show of courage, yet when he went away I felt I was the
+stronger for his coming. And this, mark you, though I was still
+unshriven, and he had never named the churchly rite to me.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone I fell to wearing out the time afoot; and, lest you
+think me harder than I was, it may be said that while I did not make
+confession to the kindly priest, I hope I tried to make my peace with
+God in some such simpler fashion as our forebears did. 'Twas none so
+great a matter, for one who lives a soldier's life must needs be ripe
+for plucking hastily.</p>
+
+<p>But in the final casting of accounts there was an item written down in
+red, and one in black, and these would not be scored across for all the
+travail of a soul departing. The one in black was bitter sorrow for the
+fate from which I might not live to save my loved one; the one in red
+was this; that I should die and carry hence the knowledge that might
+else nip the Indian onfall in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the priest away than I began to upbraid myself because I
+had not told him of this British-Indian murder plan. And yet on second
+thought 'twas clear that it had been but a poor shifting of the burden
+to weaker shoulders; and thankless, too, for Tarleton would be sure to
+put him on the question-rack to make him tell of all that passed between
+us.</p>
+
+<p>As I had let him go, he would have naught to tell, and so was safe,
+where otherwise he might be hanged or buried in the hulks for knowing
+what I knew. No, it were best he knew it not; but how was I to rid me of
+this burden?&mdash;of this and of that other laid upon me for my love?</p>
+
+<p>The question asked itself a many a time, and was as often answerless,
+before there came a stir without and voices in the corridor. It was the
+changing of the guard, I guessed, and so it proved, since presently I
+heard the clanking of the officer's sword, and double footfalls
+minishing into silence.</p>
+
+<p>The sentry newly come paced back and forth to a low-hummed quick-step of
+his own, bestirring himself as one who, roused but now from sleep,
+would wake himself and be alert. He made more noise than did the other,
+and that is why I marked it when the footfalls ceased abruptly. A moment
+afterward the bar was lifted cautiously from its socket, the latch
+clicked gently, and the door swung open. I looked, and must needs look
+again to make assurance sure. For on the threshold stood my lady
+Margery, and just behind her some broad figure of a woman whom I knew
+for her stout Norman tiring-maid.</p>
+
+<p>She gave me little time for any word of welcome or of deprecation. While
+still I stood amazed she dragged the woman in with her and closed the
+door. At that I found my tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margery! Why have you come?&quot; I spoke in French, and she was quick to
+lay a finger on her lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speak to me in English, if you please,&quot; she whispered. &quot;Jeanne knows
+nothing, and she need not know. But you ask why I come: could I do less
+than come, dear friend?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had always marveled that she could be so mocking hard at times, and at
+other times&mdash;as now&mdash;so soft and gentle. And though I thought it cruel
+that I should have to fight my battle for the losing of her over again,
+I had not the heart to chide her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could have done much less, dear lady,&quot; I said, taking her hands in
+mine; &quot;much less, and still be blameless. You have done too much for me
+already. I would you had not done so much, I would to God I had been
+hanged before you went upon your knees to that&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She freed one hand and laid a finger on my lip&mdash;nay, it was her palm,
+and if I took a dying man's fair leave and kissed it softly, I think she
+knew it not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush!&quot; she commanded. &quot;Is this a time to harbor bitter thoughts? I
+thought you might have other things to say to me, Monsieur John.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no other thing that I may say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not anything at all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Naught but a parting hope for you. I hope you will be true and loyal to
+yourself, Margery <i>mia</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To myself? I do not understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you do&mdash;I think you must.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I do not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned it over more than once in my mind if I should tell her all I
+had feared; should tell her how I came to kill a man and was fair set to
+kill another had I found a wedding afoot in the great fore-room. I could
+not bring myself to do it, and yet I thought it would go hard with me if
+I should leave her still unwarned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I should try to make you understand, you will be angry, as you were
+before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wicker chair was close beside the table and she sat down. And when
+she spoke she had her hands tight-clasped across her knee and would not
+look at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it&mdash;about&mdash;Sir Francis?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is,&quot; said I, pausing once more upon the brink of full confession.</p>
+
+<p>She waited patiently for me to speak further; waited and let me fight it
+out in slow pacings up and down before her chair. Without, the night was
+calm and still, and through the opened casement came the measured beat
+of footfalls on the gravel where the outer sentry kept his watch beneath
+the window. Within, the single candle battled feebly with the gloom and
+lighted naught for me save my dear lady's face, pensive now and saintly
+sweet as it had been that morning when I had dwelt upon it the while she
+knew it not. And in the background stood the sleepy tire-woman, giving
+no sign of life save now and then a tortured yawn behind her hand.</p>
+
+<p>I think my lady must have known how hard it was for me to speak, for,
+when the silence had grown overlong, she said, gently: &quot;I bought these
+flying minutes of the sentry, Monsieur John. Will you not use them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I should say the thing I ought to say, you'll think the minutes
+dearly bought, I fear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, that I shall not, if it will ease your mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then tell me why you sent for Father Matthieu.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The light was dim, as I have said, yet I could see the faint flush
+spread from neck to cheek.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are not of the Church, Monsieur John. You would not understand if I
+should tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I understand without your telling. You said Sir Francis
+Falconnet had asked for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas you who drove me to say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because I tried to warn you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because you would be vengeful when you should have been forgiving.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas not revenge, just then, though while I live I shall have ample
+cause to hate this man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was it, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was love; love for you, and&mdash;and Richard Jennifer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rose, and I could see her eyes ashine for all the half-gloom of the
+candle-light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are a loyal friend!&quot; she said, and there was that within the words
+to make me glad, whatever fate the dawn should have in store for me.
+&quot;You always think of others first; you think of others now, when&mdash;when
+death&mdash;Oh, Monsieur John! what can I do for you? Say quick! The man is
+coming to the door!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I have told you this, there is but one other thing, Margery dear;
+one little thing that will not let me die in peace. If I might have ten
+words with Richard Jennifer&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She left me in a fever-flutter of excitement, whipped to the door, and
+had a word with him who stood without. I heard the chink of coin, and
+then she hastened back to me, all eagerness and tremulous impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me&mdash;tell me instantly what I must do. I am not afraid. Shall I
+ride down to Jennifer House and fetch Dick here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is a prisoner, and if he were not, they would not let him see me.
+Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet&mdash;God help me,
+Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of
+helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a
+man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, yes!&quot; she cried. &quot;Write it down for me and Dick shall have it.
+Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! <i>O Sancta Maria, mater.
+Dei</i>&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The low impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as
+I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There
+were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in
+my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled
+parchment map snatched and hidden when Captain Stuart had winced and
+dropped it at the bidding of the whistling sword about his ears.</p>
+
+<p>How it was they had not searched me for it, I know not; though haply the
+captain did not guess how he had lost it. Be that as it might, I had it
+safe, and Dick should have it safe, and use it, too, to some good
+purpose, as I fondly hoped.</p>
+
+<p>You'd hardly think from the slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I
+could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a
+niggard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the
+margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the pricking
+out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the
+flourish to my name, my eager little lady seized the pounce-box, sanded
+me the heavy trailings of the quill, snatched and hid the parchment in
+her bosom, and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>And but for this; that I heard the door-latch click behind her, and then
+the heavy wooden bar fall into place, I might have thought the
+happenings of the hour the unsubstantial fancies of a dream.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="X_A_FORLORN_HOPE_CAME_TO_GRIEF"></a><h2>X<br />HOW A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Although I could not hope to know the outcome of this desperate cast to
+speed the warning to the over-mountain settlements&mdash;could never live to
+know it, as I thought&mdash;I screened the candle and stood beside the open
+window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound
+to gather some encouragement. For sure, I reasoned, if Margery's
+messenger should fail to pass the sentries there would be clamor enough
+to tell me of it.</p>
+
+<p>So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was
+space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of
+success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm
+that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough
+that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion
+was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the
+bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in
+sleep&mdash;I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering
+fires&mdash;I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then
+was any messenger of Margery's to pass the lines, or, passing them, to
+come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a
+prisoner in all but name?</p>
+
+<p>Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while
+the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart
+in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the
+bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I
+had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger
+were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the
+fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was
+sent,&mdash;I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my
+correspondent,&mdash;both Margery and Dick would be involved.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we
+seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the
+thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in
+silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan
+moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor
+crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding
+abreast&mdash;a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse
+sandwiched in between, a woman.</p>
+
+<p>You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she
+had done&mdash;this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any
+cost. Having no messenger she could trust&mdash;she knew it well when she had
+promised me&mdash;she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard
+that would have daunted many a man.</p>
+
+<p>I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times
+that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.
+Her captors passed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and
+grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some
+with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her
+and to jeer and laugh. At length&mdash;it seemed an age to me&mdash;an officer
+appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her
+horse and led into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight
+out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At
+that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never
+prayed before that God would grant me this one boon&mdash;to stand beside her
+in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all
+that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she
+went, or what the message was she carried.</p>
+
+<p>Yours is a skeptic age, my dears, and you have learned to scoff at
+things you do not understand. But, so long as I shall live, I must
+believe that agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it
+wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the
+sentry's challenge, and then a quick unbarring of the door. I turned
+upon my heel to face a young ensign come with two men at his back to
+take me to the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>They bound me well and strongly with many wrappings of stout cord before
+they led me down. Nor must you think me broken-spirited because I let
+them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to die
+unmanacled; but now I suffered gladly this little, seeing I had made my
+dear lady suffer so greatly.</p>
+
+<p>When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I
+had prayed God they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain
+to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the
+place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they
+had never offered her a chair.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and
+Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid
+to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and
+that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust
+me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came
+and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.</p>
+
+<a name="image-2"><!-- Image 2 --></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/image2.jpg"><img src="images/image2-tb.jpg" height="500" width="347"
+alt="Illustration"
+title="Illustration" /></a>
+</center>
+
+<p>So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's
+eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more
+beautiful than I had ever seen her&mdash;so beautiful that I would swear
+the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be
+expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame
+and agony.</p>
+
+<p>When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our
+fresh offense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain&mdash;this tangling of the lady in your
+treason,&quot; he began. &quot;How did you get your speech with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton,&quot; I retorted boldly,
+thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. &quot;Yet
+I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my
+getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with
+your sentry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God, you lie!&quot; was his comment on this. &quot;She might have tampered
+with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but
+not you.&quot; And then to my poor frighted love: &quot;Have you no shame,
+Mistress Margery Stair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but
+never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment
+she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate
+deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a
+dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.
+'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or
+so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you
+do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming
+red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to
+clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still
+have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and,
+when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an
+accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and
+at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting
+with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And
+on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy
+liar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A likely story, that!&quot; he scoffed. &quot;Next you will say she knew not what
+this message was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of
+tearful pleading. &quot;Oh, tell the truth!&quot; she whispered. &quot;Don't you see?
+He has the letter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood
+the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and
+does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make
+a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have
+her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of
+inspiration&mdash;a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it
+quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at
+her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow
+wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and
+drew the bow and sped the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel
+Tarleton&mdash;that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love
+there went a duty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A duty, say you? How is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my
+wife.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XI_A_LIE_WAS_MADE_THE_VERY_TRUTH"></a><h2>XI<br />HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to
+glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close
+beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by
+the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me
+to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by the lie.</p>
+
+<p>But as it was, I faced him down; and winning him, won all. There was a
+muttered oath from Falconnet, a tremulous cry of rage from where her
+father stood; and then I sought my lady's eyes to read my sentence in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>She gave me but a glance, and though I tried as I had never tried before
+to read her meaning it was hid from me. But this I marked; that she did
+draw aside from me, and that her face was cold and still, and that her
+lips were pressed together as if not all nor any should ever make her
+speak again.</p>
+
+<p>At this sharp crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death
+and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly,
+stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and
+once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he
+broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert Stair and then
+at Falconnet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God save us! I give you joy, Mr. Stair, and you, Sir Francis. These two
+have duped you bravely. By heavens! Sir Frank; 'twas you who should have
+had the sword thrust in the duel. In that event you might have stood in
+Captain Ireton's shoes, and so had the priest fetched for your benefit.&quot;
+Then he turned to Margery with a bow that had no touch of mockery in it.
+&quot;I crave your pardon, Madam; I knew not you were pleading for your
+husband's life an hour ago. It grieves me that I may not spare him to
+you longer than the night, but war is cruel at its best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stood like any statue done in cold Carrara while he spoke; and when
+she made no sign he gave the word to recommit me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take him away, Lieutenant Tybee, and see he has a bribe-proof man this
+time to keep him company. Madam Ireton, I'll put you on your honor: you
+may have access to him, but there must be no messages carried in or out.
+To your quarters, gentlemen. We must ride far and hard to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When his final word had set her free, my frozen maiden came to life and
+ran to throw herself in helpless sobbings, not upon her father, as you
+would think, but upon the good priest. And it was Father Matthieu who
+led her, still crying softly, out of the throng and up the low stair;
+and now I marked that all the rough soldiery stood aside and made way
+for her with never a man among them to scoff or sneer or point a gibe.</p>
+
+<p>At her going, Tybee drew his sword and cut the cord that bound me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These youngling cubs are over-cautious, Captain Ireton. We shall not
+make it harder for each other than we must,&quot; he said, with bluff good
+nature. And then: &quot;Will you lead the way to your room, sir?&quot;&mdash;this to
+give the youngling cub another lesson, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>I walked beside him to the stair, and when I stumbled, being weak and
+spent, he took my arm and steadied me, and I did think it kindly done.
+At my own door he gave me precedence again, saying, with a touch of the
+grateful Old World courtesy, &quot;After you, sir,&quot; and standing aside to let
+me enter first. When we were both within he touched upon the colonel's
+mandate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must obey my orders, Captain Ireton, but by your good leave I shall
+not lock you up with any trooper; I'll stay with you myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought this still more kindly than aught he had done before, and so I
+told him. But he put it off lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis little enough any one can do for you, my friend, but I will do
+that little as I can. You are like to have a visitor, I take it; if you
+have, I'm sure 'twill be a comfort if your body-guard can be stone
+blind and deaf.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he dragged the big wicker chair into the window-bay, planted
+himself deep within it with his back to all the room, and so left me to
+my own devices.</p>
+
+<p>Being spent enough to sleep beneath the shadow of a gibbet, I threw
+myself full-length upon the bed and was, I think, adrift upon the ebb
+tide of exhaustion and forgetfulness when once again the shifting of the
+wooden door-bar roused me. I rose up quickly, but Tybee was before me.
+There was some low-voiced conference at the door; then Tybee came to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Mr. Gilbert Stair,&quot; he said. &quot;He has permission from the colonel
+and insists that he must see you <i>solus</i>. I'll take your word and leave
+you, if you like.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At first I hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late
+to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed
+it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear
+lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had
+told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, yes; for God's sake let him in, Mr. Tybee!&quot; I burst out. &quot;I am
+fair crazed with weariness, and had forgot. 'Tis most important, I do
+assure you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thing was done at once, and before I knew it I was alone with the
+old man who, though he was my supplanter, was also Margery's father. He
+entered cautiously, shielding his bedroom candle with his hand and
+peering over it to make me out, as if his venturing in were not
+unperilous. And I marked that when he put the candle down upon the
+table, he edged away and felt behind him for the door as if to make sure
+of his retreat in case of need.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sit down, Captain Ireton; sit down, I beg of you,&quot; he said, in his
+thin, rasping treble. And when I had obeyed: &quot;I think you must know what
+I've come for, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I could guess; and he began again, volubly now, as if to have it
+over in the shortest space.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas not a gentlemanly thing for you to do, Captain Ireton&mdash;this
+marrying of a foolish girl out of hand while you were here a guest; and
+as for the priest that did it, I&mdash;I'll have him hanged before the army
+leaves, I promise you. But now 'tis done, I hope ye're prepared to make
+the best of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw at once that his daughter had not yet confided in him; that he was
+still entangled in my lie. So I thought it well to probe him deeper
+while I might.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What would you call 'the best' if I may ask?&quot; said I, growing the
+cooler with some better seeing of the way ahead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The marriage settlements!&quot; he cried shrilly, coming to the point at
+once, as any miser would. &quot;'Tis the merest matter of form, as ye may
+say, for your title to Appleby Hundred is well burnt out, I promise you.
+But for the decent look of it you might make over your quitclaim to your
+wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, truly; so I might.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so you should, sir; that you should, ye miserable, spying
+runag&quot;&mdash;he choked and coughed behind his hand and then began again
+without the epithets. &quot;'Tis the very least ye can do for her now, when
+you have the rope fair around your curs&mdash;ahem&mdash;your&mdash;your rebel neck.
+Only for the form's sake, to be sure, ye understand, for she'd inherit
+after you in any case.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw his drift at last, and, not caring to spare him, sped the shaft of
+truth and let it find the joint in his harness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not
+my wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for
+the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wha&mdash;what's that ye say?&quot; he piped in shrillest cadence. &quot;Not married?
+Then you&mdash;you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I lied to save her honor&mdash;that was all. A wife might do the thing she
+did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see
+and hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his
+astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and
+down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he
+shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with
+here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a
+chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the
+look of one struck with a mortal sickness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think&mdash;I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain
+Ireton,&quot; he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can
+pay,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Words; empty words,&quot; he fumed. &quot;If it were a thing to do, now&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with
+certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River,
+and a major in the Virginia line,&quot; I answered, wondering how my cousin
+once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next
+question dispelled the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to
+devise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; and yet&quot;&mdash;he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis this,&quot; he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. &quot;You've
+claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die
+to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think&mdash;I
+think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a
+secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I
+should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I
+thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his
+madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to
+cut the knot of all entanglements.</p>
+
+<p>As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since
+a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never
+dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the
+world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of
+it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. Dick would love her none the
+less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And
+if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor
+double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby
+Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in
+all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the
+Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with
+greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could
+help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a
+while.</p>
+
+<p>So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you,
+I gave my host his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If
+you can make your daughter understand&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The jade will do as she is bid,&quot; he cut in wrathfully. &quot;If she will
+drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot.
+And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her
+legatee residuary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle
+for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his title to my
+father's lands&mdash;a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was
+enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to
+think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty
+miser.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean,&quot; I said.
+&quot;But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said
+a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form.&quot; He rose and
+hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand
+played a rattling tattoo on the latch. &quot;I&mdash;I'll go and have the papers
+drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word
+that you will sign them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye; they shall be signed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the
+lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room
+without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own
+communings.</p>
+
+<p>These were not altogether of assurance. Though I had promised readily
+enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my
+lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some
+hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to
+fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property
+and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he
+said&mdash;that she would do as she was bid&mdash;I thought I knew her temper well
+enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she
+put her will against the world, the world would never move her.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard
+some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the
+wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at
+the door I stood apart and turned my back.</p>
+
+<p>When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a
+parchment that might have been a ducal title deed for size, stood
+Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of
+them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the
+corner Tybee stood to keep the door.</p>
+
+<p>I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them,
+strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She
+gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to
+what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last,
+under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was
+cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest,
+looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his
+predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature.
+Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish
+pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this
+matter ripens further, Mr. Stair,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the
+window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so
+little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has your father told you, Margery?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He tells me nothing that I care to know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he has told you what you must do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot; She looked with eyes that saw me not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are here to do it of your own free will?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet it must be done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of
+our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the
+saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some
+short while till you can change it for a better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the
+morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not
+thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;See what comes of tampering with the truth,&quot; she said, and I could see
+her short lip curl with scorn. &quot;Why should you lie and lie again, when
+any one could see that it must come to this&mdash;or worse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw it not,&quot; I said. &quot;But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's
+need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet
+other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My honor!&quot;&mdash;this in bitterest irony. &quot;What is a woman's honor, sir,
+when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole
+again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that
+you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You make me rue it now, beforehand. <i>Mon Dieu!</i> is a woman but a thing,
+to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?
+You'll make me hate you while I live&mdash;and after!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in
+this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that
+if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion
+shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it
+cut me like a knife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You drive me to it&mdash;listen, sir, <i>you drive me to it</i>! And I have said
+that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and
+they are waiting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not
+suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside
+me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage
+settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I
+bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of
+mine to Appleby Hundred, <i>but the estate itself</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two
+plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never
+thought to smile again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So,&quot; said I; &quot;the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation
+act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I
+shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own
+house. Give me the pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer
+for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though
+not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.</p>
+
+<p>When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him;
+the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full
+forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his
+love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And
+here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one
+well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came
+for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger
+and made me take and use it.</p>
+
+<p>And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and
+place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper
+room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that
+the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his
+benediction. All through this farce&mdash;which was in truth the grimmest of
+all tragedies&mdash;my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at
+the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>You'd guess that I would take it hard&mdash;her leaving of me thus, as I made
+sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was
+off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted
+death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in
+childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had
+not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my
+mother's dying love.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XII_THE_NEWS_CAME_TO_UNWELCOME_EARS"></a><h2>XII<br />HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Though all the western quarter of the sky was night-black and spangled
+yet with stars, the dawn was graying slowly in the east when Tybee
+roused me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They have not come for you as yet,&quot; he said; &quot;so I took time by the
+forelock and passed the word for breakfast. It heartens a man to eat a
+bite and drink a cup of wine just on the battle's edge. Will you sit and
+let me serve you, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I will not,&quot; said I; adding that I would blithely share the
+breakfast with him. Whereat he laughed and clipt my hand, and swore I
+was a true soldier and a brave gentleman to boot.</p>
+
+<p>So we sat and hobnobbed at the table; and Tybee lighted all the remnant
+candle-ends, and broached the wine and pledged me in a bumper before we
+fell to upon the cold haunch of venison.</p>
+
+<p>My summons came when we had shared the heel-tap of the bottle. It was my
+toast to this kind-hearted youngster, and we drained it standing what
+time the stair gave back the tread of marching men. Tybee crashed his
+glass upon the floor and wrung my hand across the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good by, my Captain; they have come. God damn me, sir, I'll swear they
+might do worse than let you go, for all your spying. You've carried off
+this matter with the lady as a gentleman should, and whilst I live, she
+shall not lack a friend. If you have any word to leave for her&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. &quot;No,&quot; said I; then, on second thought: &quot;And yet there
+is a word. You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the
+lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely; 'twas plain enough for any one to see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to
+Richard Jennifer. He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in
+a formal way, and that to save the lady's honor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was
+lifted and my reprieve was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier
+hangmen marched me off without ado. The house and all within it seemed
+yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly
+kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees. In shortest space
+we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day
+wakes wherein it must be shuffled off! As a soldier must, I thought I
+had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it
+upon my sleeve in battle. But now, when I was marching forth to this
+cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all
+nature cried aloud to me.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden
+down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup
+abrim and running over with the wine of life. I thought the cool, moist
+air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature's garb had never
+seemed so blithe. There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded
+prospect. The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed
+enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us
+as we passed. And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with
+softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with
+one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had
+the scent of us.</p>
+
+<p>A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion
+picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made
+bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and
+saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.</p>
+
+<p>The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to
+be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that
+I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the
+volleying would not wake the house.</p>
+
+<p>So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and
+reply came out into an open grove of oaks: then I knew where they had
+brought me&mdash;and why. 'Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle
+with the baronet. On its farther confines two horses nibbled
+rein's-length at the grass, with Falconnet's trooper serving-man to hold
+them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my
+enemy was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas all prearranged; for when the ensign had saluted he marched his
+men a little way apart and drew them up in line with muskets ported. But
+at a sign from Falconnet, two of the men broke ranks and came to strap
+me helpless with their belts. I smiled at that, and would not miss the
+chance to jeer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are a sorry coward, Captain Falconnet, as bullies ever are,&quot; I
+said. &quot;Would not your sword suffice against a man with empty hands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He passed the taunt in silence, and when the men had left me, said: &quot;I
+have come to speed your parting, Captain Ireton. You are a thick-headed,
+witless fool, as you have always been; yet since you've blundered into
+serving me, I would not grudge the time to come and thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I serve you?&quot; I cried. &quot;God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the
+table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a
+carving tool!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed softly. &quot;Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because
+you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns,&quot; he retorted.
+&quot;And yet I say you've served me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me how, in God's name, that I may not die with that sin unrepented
+of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, in many small ways, but chiefly in this affair with the little lady
+of Appleby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never!&quot; I denied. &quot;So far as decent speech could compass it, I have
+ever sought to tell her what a conscienceless villain you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again at that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know women but indifferently, my Captain, if you think to breach a
+love affair by a cannonade of hard words. But I am in no humor to
+dispute with you. You have lost, and I have won; and, were I not here to
+come between, you'd look your last upon the things of earth in shortest
+order, I do assure you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You?&mdash;you come between?&quot; I scoffed. &quot;You are all kinds of a knave, Sir
+Francis, but your worst enemy never accused you of being a fool!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a look in his eyes that I could never fathom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are bitter hard, John Ireton&mdash;bitter and savage and unforgiving.
+You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make
+the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have
+you never a touch of human kindliness in you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I
+have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn
+a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use
+this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal
+of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me
+out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.</p>
+
+<p>So I could only say: &quot;You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tush!&quot; said he. &quot;That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it
+now is but a mask.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For what?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not,
+as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John
+Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's
+wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew
+not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot
+and ran me through,&quot; I countered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your
+eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life,
+and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; you reserved me for this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You forced my hand, John Ireton,&quot; he said, speaking low that the others
+might not hear. &quot;You had her ear from day to day and used your
+privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for
+vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed, and sanity began to come again. &quot;Make an end of it,&quot; I said.
+&quot;I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it
+so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing
+Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime
+lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's
+headquarters in South Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you read it?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to
+Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to
+'list in your old service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would not take it&mdash;at your hands or his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and
+honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Make an end,&quot; I said again. &quot;I understand you will obey his Lordship's
+order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you
+have me do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my
+very good friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I let that go uncontradicted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make
+it better,&quot; he went on.</p>
+
+<p>This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had
+not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he
+had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past
+midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you
+time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; after that our ways must lie apart&mdash;or yours and Margery's, at all
+events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you
+have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the
+ensign.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if I refuse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to
+thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all.&quot; So much he
+said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I
+think, he spoke the simple truth. &quot;God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's
+hell to have her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This
+fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a
+passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why
+he was come upon this errand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&quot; said I. &quot;Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?&quot; 'Twas
+but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.</p>
+
+<p>He swore a sneering oath. &quot;So the priest carried tales, did he? Well,
+make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from
+his bed and hanged like a dog.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled again. &quot;'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to
+beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bah!&quot; he scoffed. &quot;That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I
+had better information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward,
+some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and
+with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another,
+we made a sober truth of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a
+fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell
+away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous
+demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought
+the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust
+his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake
+it made me shudder with abhorrence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the
+spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish
+you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!&quot; Then he
+wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. &quot;Belt him
+to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting
+over-long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the
+ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little
+pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not
+why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line
+drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces
+pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I
+remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which
+would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range,
+a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets
+killed the senses.</p>
+
+<p>But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold
+it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside&mdash;a glance
+that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare&mdash;showed
+me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.</p>
+
+<p>What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
+waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
+the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
+the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
+left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had
+stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen&mdash;all this befell in
+less than any time the written words can measure.</p>
+
+<p>I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman
+slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
+centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
+was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
+steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
+followed after.</p>
+
+<p>It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
+the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
+Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
+live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
+his great hands clutching at the empty air.</p>
+
+<p>I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
+and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
+could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.</p>
+
+<p>I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the
+skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
+him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
+horse-holding trooper at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
+and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
+away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XIII_A_PILGRIMAGE_BEGINS"></a><h2>XIII<br />IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
+opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
+ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
+the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
+agreed-on rallying point.</p>
+
+<p>Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
+any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
+patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
+British jaws to masticate.</p>
+
+<p>They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
+levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,&mdash;he was the father of
+all the martinets,&mdash;turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
+contemptuous &quot;<i>Ach! mein Gott!</i>&quot; And, truly, there was little outward
+show among them of the sterling metal underneath.</p>
+
+<p>They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
+brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
+soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
+of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
+captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
+well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
+raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.</p>
+
+<p>Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against
+the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney
+of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military
+show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain
+persevering sort.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?&quot; drawled one of
+them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face
+that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went
+on behind it. &quot;I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the
+word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful
+o' lead to chaw on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in
+fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such
+as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.</p>
+
+<p>When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney&mdash;he was the
+limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind&mdash;gripped my hand and
+gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than
+that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of
+good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little;
+though as for that, we should both thank the Indian.&quot; At which he looked
+around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. &quot;Where is
+the chief, Ephraim?&quot;&mdash;this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically
+reloading his long rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind
+about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking,
+immejitly, <i>if</i> not sooner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for
+Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba,&quot; he said; &quot;one of the friendlies. He was
+out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the
+news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
+to our little ambushment&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see,&quot; said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. &quot;This Catawba:
+is he a man about my age?&quot; Captain Forney laughed. &quot;God He only knows an
+Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
+more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
+little cadger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
+as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
+the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
+first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
+boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
+firelock and stood before me defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
+the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
+my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
+plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
+and earned an Indian friendship.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know this Uncanoola,&quot; I said. &quot;My father befriended him in the plague
+of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe.&quot; Then I would ask if
+these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
+which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
+his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
+the day's march.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,&quot;
+he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
+Father Matthieu. &quot;And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
+against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
+the North.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
+yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves,&quot; I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
+shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
+frontier, had matriculated early.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've seen us at our best,&quot; he amended. &quot;We can ambush like the
+Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge&mdash;and run away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that ye're saying, youngster?&quot; The grizzled hunter had finished
+reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
+the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You heard me, Eph Yeates,&quot; replied my young captain, curtly.</p>
+
+<p>The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a
+clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been
+heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says
+Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in
+wildcats; and I can do it now, <i>if</i> not sooner!&quot; he shrilled. &quot;Come on,
+you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in
+natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the
+borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the
+capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two
+went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a
+pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the
+finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain
+apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man
+caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton,&quot; he said.
+&quot;There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let
+him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for
+every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or
+standing against trained troops in open field&mdash;&quot; He shrugged again and
+turned to tighten his saddle-girth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see,&quot; said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was
+told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford,
+who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment
+thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain
+Forney,&quot; said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew
+of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had
+overheard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we're at our best in that,&quot;
+he rejoined, carelessly. &quot;And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that's an
+old story. The king's men have tried it twice and they have not yet
+caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping. Ease your mind on that
+score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing
+better to do. I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to
+keep it in countenance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its
+demands. As fortune's wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but
+by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend&mdash;to
+Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common
+enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind. In
+sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank
+confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings. That done, I owed it
+equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I
+was not yet fit to take the field&mdash;which was true enough. Whereupon he
+and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we
+parted company.</p>
+
+<p>When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day's end.
+Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh
+into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till
+nightfall. The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge
+in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags
+heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying
+clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air
+grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along. For sober second thought, and
+the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril
+overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had
+entangled me.</p>
+
+<p>The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing
+me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval. Would
+Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on
+the Holy Evangelists? I doubted it; and striving to see it through his
+eyes, was made to doubt it more. For death should have been my
+justifier, and death had played me false.</p>
+
+<p>As for setting the midnight marriage aside, I made sure the lawyer tribe
+could find a way, if that were all. But here there was a loyal daughter
+of the Church to reckon with. Loathing her bonds, as any true-hearted
+maiden must, would Margery consent to have them broken by the law? I
+knew well she would not. Though our poor knotting of the tie had been
+little better than a tragic farce, it lacked nothing of force to bind
+the tender conscience of a woman bred to look upon the churchly rite as
+final.</p>
+
+<p>So, twist and turn it as I might, the coil was desperate; and as I
+strode on gloomily, measuring this the first stage in a pilgrimage I had
+never thought to make, a fire of sullen anger began to smoke and
+smolder within me, and I could find it in my heart to curse the cruel
+kindness of my rescuers; to sorrow in my inmost soul that they had come
+between to make a living recreant of one who would fain have died an
+honest man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XIV_THE_BARONET_PLAYED_ROUGE-ET-NOIR"></a><h2>XIV<br />HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all
+the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to
+make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple
+grove.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge
+was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor
+black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me
+back again.</p>
+
+<p>Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as
+majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line
+about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on
+the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would
+quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence
+must be in hiding.</p>
+
+<p>When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping
+against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of
+waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness for
+me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed
+and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate
+had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.</p>
+
+<p>There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, with
+all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.
+There was no sally-port in all this wall save one&mdash;the one that death
+had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,
+death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of
+the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisoner
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it
+calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at
+any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me
+for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
+but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
+this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
+sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
+vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
+spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
+who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
+turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
+linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
+'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
+a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
+suicide was a soul accurst&mdash;a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
+flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
+sharpened stake to pinion it.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
+my father's sword&mdash;Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
+the chimney-breast&mdash;would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
+how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
+the suicide came to give me pause.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
+seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best
+safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary
+baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
+make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
+widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
+compassing of his end.</p>
+
+<p>But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
+my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
+offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
+would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
+robbed him for his own honor's sake?&mdash;that it was not I but fate that
+was to blame?</p>
+
+<p>These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
+bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
+straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness
+was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again
+and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that
+love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.</p>
+
+<p>In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours of
+waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the
+mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward
+constrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.</p>
+
+<p>The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy
+of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to be
+gone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was
+done, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other
+blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the
+night, I sallied forth upon my errand.</p>
+
+<p>I've wished a thousand times, as I sit here before the fire and jot
+these memories down in crabbed black on white, that I could conjure up
+for you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the story
+moves.</p>
+
+<p>True, its hills and valleys are the same; the river keeps its course;
+and in the west the mountain sky-line is unchanged. But here similitude
+is at an end. You've hacked the virgin forest into shapes and fringes
+where once it was an ample mantle seamed only by the rivers, and frayed
+here and there at distant intervals by the settler's ax.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged in
+its furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the
+mystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the
+centuries. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles,
+became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, the
+solitude laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way.
+But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof, and all the
+shadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright the
+alien-born.</p>
+
+<p>I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and loved
+these forest solitudes. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, the
+twilight shadows awed me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk
+so like a crouching panther that I sprang aside and had the steel half
+out before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a man
+gliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with
+me as if with sinister intent.</p>
+
+<p>I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though
+inwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. What
+threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to
+fear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack of
+clamor when they were beating up a cover.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting
+furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of my
+eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked
+a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent
+home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was
+become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the
+belt, standing so near he could have pricked me with his scalping knife.</p>
+
+<p>It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the
+friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uncanoola?&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. &quot;Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him <i>that</i> way,&quot; pointing back
+along the path.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?&quot; Though my long exile
+had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the
+stately Indian hyperbole.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long
+eyes&mdash;see heap things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uncanoola see heap things,&quot; he repeated. &quot;See Captain Jennif' so&quot;&mdash;he
+threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling
+snake-like through the underwood. &quot;Bime-by, come to river and find
+canoe&mdash;jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh
+and shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learned
+of my escape and was seeking me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all the chief saw?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tell
+Captain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The white squaw?&quot; said I. &quot;Who is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mere
+shaking of the ribs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No can tell that, neither, too,&quot; he said. Then, with a swift dart aside
+from the subject: &quot;Captain Long-knife care much 'bout black dogs
+yonder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew he meant the negroes at the hunting lodge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The white man cares for the black as a kind master should,&quot; I returned.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian spat upon the ground in token of his hatred and contempt for
+all the black skins in his fatherland. I never understood this bitter
+race antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well written
+out in many a bloody massacre of that earlier day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before
+the moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool on
+their heads?&quot; he queried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If need be,&quot; I asserted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah!&quot; he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth had
+swallowed him.</p>
+
+<p>I lost no time in indecision. Since Jennifer was abroad, I had no
+business at the plantations; and if Tomas and the other refugees were
+like to come to harm, I could do no less than hasten back to warn or
+help them.</p>
+
+<p>So I retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw no
+more shadows in the ancient wood&mdash;in truth, had much ado to see the
+single step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skyless
+depths.</p>
+
+<p>I was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that I could hear
+the murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of the
+tree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green and
+then to red. 'Twas like the childish Africans, I said, to draw a secret
+sentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise it
+far and wide. Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of
+the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stood
+and listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in its
+scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me
+sorely of the breath I wanted.</p>
+
+<p>The cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieu
+thereof, was but a niggard acre hemmed in on every side, save that
+toward the river, by the virgin forest. For cover there were holly
+thickets here and there, and into one of these I plunged, creeping on
+hands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.</p>
+
+<p>The scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lasting
+shapes upon the memory. A brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glow
+flaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. The open
+space around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to and
+fro; and in the gloom beyond the fire I saw a shadowy horseman backed by
+others still more phantom-like.</p>
+
+<p>There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound
+Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that
+band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the
+powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when I came to
+look again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before the
+burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with
+the eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my
+faithful Darius.</p>
+
+<p>By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why
+they slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was his
+death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest
+alive with ghastly echoes.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my
+blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for
+vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth
+and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup,
+and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon
+the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade
+it.</p>
+
+<p>This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The other
+blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behind
+through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave
+to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of
+savage triumph.</p>
+
+<p>They flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, and
+though I caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping of
+the Indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.</p>
+
+<p>I could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he would
+not tell them what they wished to know&mdash;could not, indeed, since I had
+left no word behind to track me by&mdash;was quickly evident. A cord was
+found, and while I crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helpless
+as one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs and
+swung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such a
+matter before the cabin door.</p>
+
+<p>He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the
+hand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.
+But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury the
+Indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that
+should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the
+splits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.</p>
+
+<p>You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.
+Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as
+pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would
+Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses
+unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me
+nauseate with horror.</p>
+
+<p>As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round
+and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to
+hear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to
+freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the
+cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly
+brown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a
+plea: &quot;O Massa! Massa Cap'm! shoot po' nigga and let um die!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and
+lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to
+try to put him out of misery.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust of
+blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse
+apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well
+within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the
+rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his
+horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling
+to run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of
+handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble
+to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew
+his sword.</p>
+
+<p>In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here
+again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him
+fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he
+would not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon
+his shoutings.</p>
+
+<p>That done, I snatched the musket that had cost the man his life, and,
+staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In the
+interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed
+its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues
+beneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough,
+the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with
+green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not
+be merciful.</p>
+
+<p>I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and
+make a mark I could not miss. The pause gave space for some swift
+steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a
+fierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger held
+a life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas,
+and by the laws of God and man had earned his death. The tortured slave
+had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would
+give him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bullet
+planted in my enemy's heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving
+me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.</p>
+
+<p>All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round
+as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold
+on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One little
+crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.
+But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: &quot;O
+Massa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy&mdash;shoot po' nigga and let 'um die!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king's
+musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger
+of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these
+fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I was
+surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle
+bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XV_A_HATCHET_SINGS_A_MAN_TO_SLEEP"></a><h2>XV<br />IN WHICH A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>In such a coil as this I'd looped about me there was nothing for it, as
+it seemed, but to draw the steel and die as a soldier should. So I broke
+cover on the forest side of the holly thicket with a yell as fierce as
+theirs, and picked a tree to set my back against, and ran for it.</p>
+
+<p>I never reached the tree. In mid career, when all the Cherokee wolf pack
+was bursting through the holly tangle at my heels, two men, a white man
+and an Indian, ran in ahead, as I supposed to cut me off. Just then the
+dry roof of the hunting lodge roared aflame, reddening the forest far
+and near. The light was at my back and on the faces of the two who ran
+to meet me. A great sob swelled in my throat and choked me, but I ran
+the faster. For these were my dear lad and the friendly Catawba,
+charging gallantly to cover my retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It was a ready help in time of need. They ran in bravely, the chief
+ahead, twirling his tomahawk for the throw, with Dick a pace to right
+and rear, his two great pistols brandished and the grandsire of all the
+broadswords dangling by a thong at his wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Follow the chief!&quot; he shouted in passing; and at the word the Catawba
+stopped short, sent his hatchet whistling into the yapping pack behind
+me, and swerved to run aside and point the way for me.</p>
+
+<p>Left to myself, I hope I should have had the grace to stand with
+Jennifer. But at the turning point of indecision the quick-witted Indian
+read my thought, and snatching the sword from my hand, gave me no choice
+but to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>So I ran with him; but as I fled I looked behind and saw a sight to put
+the ancient hero tales to the blush. One man against two-score my brave
+Dick stood, while through the underwood the mounted soldiery came to
+make the odds still greater.</p>
+
+<p>He never flinched for all the hurtling missiles sent on ahead to cut him
+down, nor gave a glance aside to where the horsemen were deploying to
+surround him. As I looked, the two great pistols belched in the very
+faces of the nearest Cherokees; and in the momentary check the firearms
+made, the basket-hilted claymore went to work, rising and falling like a
+weaver's beam.</p>
+
+<p>I saw no more; but some heart-bursting minutes later, when Jennifer came
+racing on behind to share the flight his heroic stand had made a
+possibility, the swelling sob choked me once again; and when I thought
+of what this his rescue of me meant to him, I could have blubbered like
+a boy.</p>
+
+<p>But there was little time or space to give remorse an inning. The
+Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels.
+And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted
+men: &quot;A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, you
+devils!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We ran in Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I
+followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a
+man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down
+through a tangled briar thicket into the river road.</p>
+
+<p>We were in time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could
+hear the <i>pad-pad-pad</i> of the light-footed runners close upon us,
+following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was
+trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck
+gallop down the road.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God!&quot; says Richard, with a quick eyeshot to right and left in the
+lesser gloom of the open. &quot;I was afeard even the chief might miss the
+place in the dark. Down the bank to the river!&mdash;quick, man, and
+cautious! If they smell us out now, we're no better than buzzard-meat!&quot;
+And when we reached the water's edge: &quot;You taught me how to paddle a
+pirogue, Jack; I hope you haven't lost the knack of it yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I; and the three of us slid the hollowed log into the stream.</p>
+
+<p>We were afloat in shortest order, holding the canoe against the current
+by clinging to the overhanging trees that fringed the bank; yet with
+paddles poised for a second dash for freedom should the need arise. I
+should have dipped forthwith to save the precious minutes, but Jennifer
+stayed me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hist!&quot; he whispered. &quot;Hold steady and listen. They can not see us from
+above; mayhap we've thrown them off the scent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought it most unlikely; but his guess was right and mine was wrong.
+Though any of these savages could lift a trail in daylight, following it
+at top speed like a trained blood-hound, yet now the darkness baffled
+them.</p>
+
+<p>So there was some running to and fro in the road above our heads, and
+then the troopers galloped down. Followed hastily a labored confab
+through the linguister, broken in the midst by a fury of hot oaths from
+Falconnet; and then the chase swept on toward the plantations, and we
+were left to make their losing of us sure by whatsoever means we chose.</p>
+
+<p>We paddled slowly up stream in silence, keeping well within the blacker
+shadow of the tree fringe. When we came opposite the glowing ruins of
+the hunting lodge, Jennifer backed upon his paddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll go ashore?&quot; said he.</p>
+
+<p>I said I would, adding: &quot;They have slaughtered poor old Darius, and I am
+loath to leave his bones for the buzzards to pick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made no comment other than to swear in sympathy. When the pirogue
+grounded, the Indian was out like a cat, to vanish phantom-wise among
+the trees. I followed in some clumsier fashion, leaving Jennifer to
+keep the canoe; but half way up the hill he joined me, and would not
+turn back for all my urging. &quot;No; hang me if I'll let you out of
+eye-grip again,&quot; was all he would say; and so we went together, and were
+together at the seeing of what the glowing ember-heap would show us.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Tomas had his sepulture already. His cord had burned in two and let
+him down so close beside the cabin wall that all the blazing debris from
+the overhanging eaves had made his funeral pile. Darius lay as I had
+last seen him; and him we buried in the maize clearing at the back, with
+the ember glow for funeral lights.</p>
+
+<p>It was a chanceful thing to do. Since the Cherokees had left their dead
+and wounded, and Falconnet the body of his trooper who had yielded me
+the musket, there was small doubt they would return. Yet we had time to
+dig a shallow grave for my old henchman; to dig and fill it up again;
+and afterward to make a circuit round the burning pile to reach the
+river side once more.</p>
+
+<p>When we had launched the canoe, and were afloat and ready for the start,
+the Catawba was still missing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is the chief, think you?&quot; I asked; but Dick's answer, if, indeed,
+he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the
+silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long
+drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the
+pirogue stern to strand with a quick paddle stroke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That last was Uncanoola's war cry; they've doubled back in time to
+catch him at it!&quot; he cried. &quot;Stand by to drive her when I give the word!
+Here he comes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Down the sloping hillside, looking, in the red glow of the ember heap,
+more like a flying demon than a man, came the Catawba, one hand gripping
+the scalping-knife, the other flung aloft to flaunt his terrible
+trophies in sight of his pursuers. They were so close upon him that
+waiting promised death for all of us; so Jennifer dipped again to send
+the canoe a broad jump from the bank.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ready!&quot; he cried. &quot;He'll take the water like a fish, and we can pick
+him up afterward&mdash;<i>Now</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I heard the clean-cut dive of the Indian, and struck the paddle deep to
+balance Jennifer's stroke. But as I bent to put my back into it, some
+flying missile caught me fair behind the ear, and but for Jennifer's
+quick wit I should have swamped the crazy shallop. In a flash he jerked
+me flat between his knees and sent the pirogue with a mighty thrust
+beyond the zone of fire light.</p>
+
+<p>At that, though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough
+to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the
+spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But
+afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's
+paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this
+gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning
+lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once
+again a little child sinking asleep in my young mother's arms.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XVI_JENNIFER_THREW_A_MAIN_WITH_DEATH"></a><h2>XVI<br />HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.
+No odds how long the night, 'tis but a moment from the lapse of
+consciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep that
+crept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling drip
+from Jennifer's paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I came
+awake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and broken
+dreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.</p>
+
+<p>The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed of
+bearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and by
+the flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls of
+the burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been the
+well-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark of
+human occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with the
+reek of many fires.</p>
+
+<p>When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, and
+Jennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as a
+tender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Know you? Why should I not?&quot; I said, wondering why the words took so
+many breaths between.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O Jack!&quot; was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to
+babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim
+death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set
+me dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here
+upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with
+only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A week?&quot; I queried, when he had named the interval. &quot;And you have been
+here all the time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've never left you, save to forage for the pot,&quot; he admitted. &quot;I dared
+not leave you, Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But where are we?&quot; I would ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a den on the river's edge, a mile or more above your sacked cabin.
+'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and shared
+since by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it.
+Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the chief came off safely?&quot; I said, falling into a dumb and
+impotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so of
+strength to say a third.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Right as a trivet&mdash;scalps and all,&quot; laughed Jennifer. &quot;He'll be the
+envy of every warrior in the tribe when he vaunts himself at the
+Catawbas' council fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I let it rest a while at that, casting about for words to shape a
+hungrier question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you no news?&quot; I asked, at length.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little or none,&quot; he answered shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have had some word&mdash;some news&mdash;from Appleby Hundred?&quot; I
+stammered feebly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing you'd care to hear,&quot; he rejoined, evasively, I thought. &quot;'Tis
+as you left it, save that Tarleton whipped away to the south again as
+suddenly as he came, and our cursing baronet has made the manor house
+his headquarters in fact, lodging himself and all his troop on Mr.
+Stair. From his lying quiet and keeping the Cherokees in tow, there will
+be some deviltry afoot, I'll warrant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew that Falconnet was waiting for the powder cargo, but another
+matter crowded this aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But&mdash;but Margery?&quot; I queried, on sharpest tenter-hooks to know how much
+or little he had heard.</p>
+
+<p>I thought his brow darkened at the question, but mayhap it was only a
+shadow cast by the flickering fire. At any rate, he laughed hardily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is well&mdash;and well content, I dare swear. 'Twas only yesterday I saw
+her taking the air on the river road, with Falconnet for an escort. You
+told me once he had a sure hand with the women and it made me mad; but,
+truly, I have come to think you drew it mild, Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now though I could ply a decent ready blade, or keep a firing line from
+lurching at a pinch, I had not learned to put a snaffle on a blundering
+tongue, as I have said before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn him as you please, Dick, and he'll warrant it. But you must not
+judge the lady over harshly, nor always by appearances. She may have
+flouted you as a boyish lover, and yet I think&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stopped in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenest
+agonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgot
+the gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsed
+into shamed silence, but Jennifer would not suffer it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what is it that you think?&quot; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think&mdash;nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick,&quot; I
+blundered on, seeing no way to put him off.</p>
+
+<p>He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old love
+reawakening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know what
+she thinks of me?&quot; he broke in, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice my
+savior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship.
+I knew it&mdash;knew that the pregnant moment for full confession had
+arrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed,
+I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could make
+him understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So I
+paltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You forget that I have come to know her well,&quot; I said. &quot;I was a month
+or more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me many
+things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What things?&quot; he questioned, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, many things. She spoke often of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said,&quot; he begged. &quot;It
+can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me&mdash;nay,'tis
+even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh,
+Jack, I love her!&mdash;I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she
+stood by to spring the drop and turn me off!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, this
+passionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I must
+needs be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Another time, Richard. I am strangely unnerved and dizzy-headed now. By
+and by, when I am stronger, I will tell you all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Taking a reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimed
+malison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewed
+me a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I had
+drunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, he
+spread his coat to screen me from the fire light and would have driven
+me to sleep again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At any rate, you shall not talk,&quot; he promised. &quot;If you are wakeful I
+will talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about the
+fighting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His news was chiefly a later repetition of Father Matthieu's and Captain
+Abram Forney's, but there was this to add: the Congress had appointed
+the Englishman, Horatio Gates, chief of the army in the South, and this
+new leader was on his way to take command.</p>
+
+<p>De Kalb, with the Maryland and Delaware lines and Colonel Armand's
+legion, was encamped on Deep River, waiting for the newly-appointed
+general; and Caswell and Griffith Rutherford, with the militia, were
+already pressing forward to some handgrips with my Lord Cornwallis in
+the South.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer at hand, the partizan war-fire flamed afresh wherever a Tory
+company met a patriot, and there were wicked doings, more like savage
+massacres than fair-fought battles of the soldier sort.</p>
+
+<p>When he had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell me
+how he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the night
+of the cabin sack.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas partly chance,&quot; he said. &quot;A redcoat troop had me in durance at
+Jennifer House, and while they affected to hold me at parole, I never
+gave consent to that, and so was kept a prisoner. They shut me in the
+wine-bin with a guard, and when the fellow was well soaked and silly, I
+bound and gagged him and broke jail. I took the river for it, meaning to
+outlie until the hue and cry was over; and just at dusk Uncanoola
+dropped upon me and told me of your need. From that to helping him cut
+you out of your raffle with the Cherokees was but a hand's turn in the
+day's work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A lucky turn for me,&quot; I said; and then at second thought I would deny
+the saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerous ground
+again, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-driven
+on a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, and
+where he got the antique claymore.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in
+'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first
+pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both
+sides&mdash;no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends
+for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How was that?&quot; I would ask, being as little familiar with the low
+country settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. Mistress
+Flora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying,
+they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over,
+the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick of
+the fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us,
+came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-odd
+miles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for the
+prisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty&mdash;these
+and the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to my
+lot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow as
+ever skirled a pibroch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was like you,&quot; I said; &quot;to make a friend and retainer out of your
+prisoner. And so this Highland piper has been your fencing master, has
+he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas he taught me what little I know of the claymore play; and this
+stout old blade is his. 'Tis as good as a woodman's ax when you have the
+knack of swinging it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; said I. &quot;Also, you seemed to have the knack, and the strength
+as well, in spite of the crippled arm you were carrying in a sling the
+night before when they haled you into Colonel Tarleton's court at
+Appleby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A little ruse of war,&quot; he said, laughing and making a fist to show me
+his arm was strong and sound again. &quot;'Twas M'Gillicuddy put me up to it,
+saying they would be like to deal the gentler with a wounded man. But
+how came you to know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was another chance to tell him what he should be told, but the
+words would not say themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I stood within arm's reach of you that night,&quot; said I; and from that I
+hastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it came
+to in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet,&quot; was his comment, when I
+had made an end of this recounting of my adventures. &quot;He knows you are
+in hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well for
+you&mdash;or, more belike, for both of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you know this?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have both seen and heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge,
+and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twas
+just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past in the
+canoe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you say you have heard, as well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't ask me, Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this he
+blurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess who
+it is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack,&quot; he said,
+bitterly. &quot;It seems that Falconnet made sure we had both gone to join
+the army, which was but natural. If she were less than the spiteful
+little Tory vixen that she is, she would have been content to let it
+rest so. But she would not let it rest so. With her own lips she assured
+Falconnet he still had us to reckon with; nay, more&mdash;she made a boast of
+it that we would never go so far away from her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbow
+feebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who slandered her like this, Dick? Put a name to the cur, and as I live
+and get my strength again, I'll hunt him down and choke him with that
+lie!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; he objected soberly; &quot;that would be my quarrel, were there ever a
+peg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that is
+friendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeates
+by name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at Appleby
+Hundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoats
+and Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard one
+night when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. He
+says she was in a pretty passion at the baronet's slackness, stamping
+her foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of one
+or both of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might
+of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce
+conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of
+the ways for the lover and the husband.</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he loved
+her&mdash;would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That was
+the lover's road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could I
+believe her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love could
+live beyond that moment of conviction.</p>
+
+<p>But at this perilous pass the husband's road ran truer than the lover's.
+Richard believed her capable of this hard-hearted thing and went on
+loving her blindly in spite of it. But as for me, I said I would never
+give belief an inch of standing-room; that had I stood in Ephraim
+Yeates's shoes, having the witness of my own eyes and ears, I would
+still have found excuse and exculpation for her.</p>
+
+<p>I stole a glance at Jennifer. He was sitting with his face in his hands,
+a silent figure of a strong man humbled. He had called her a Delilah,
+and the green withes of her binding cut sore into the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you love her, Dick; can you believe her capable of this, and
+yet go on loving her?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He let me see his face. It was haggard and grief-marred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd pay the devil's own price could I say 'no' to that, Jack. But I can
+not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I swear I love her better than you do, Richard Jennifer. She hates
+me well&mdash;God knows she has good cause to hate me fiercely; yet I would
+trust her with my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked to see him pin me down at this; and though the words had
+fairly shaped and said themselves, I laid fast hold of my courage and
+was prepared to make them good. But he would only smile and draw the
+bearskin cover over me, tucking me in as tenderly as a mother, and
+saying very gently:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So she has bewitched you, too; and now there are two poor fools of love
+instead of one. But you are stronger than I, Jack. You will break the
+spell and put it down and live beyond it, and that I never shall&mdash;God
+help me!&quot; And with that, he went to his own bed beside the fire, telling
+me I must lie quiet and try to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I did lie quiet, but sleep came not, nor did I woo it. For long past the
+time when I could hear his measured breathing, I lay awake to plan how I
+might draw the baronet's man-hunt to myself, and so free my loyal
+Richard of the peril that by rights was mine.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XVII_LOVE_TOOK_TOLL_OF_FRIENDSHIP"></a><h2>XVII<br />SHOWING HOW LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>For some few days after Jennifer's narrow escape at the entrance to our
+hiding place, the Cherokees were hot upon our scent, quartering the
+forest on both banks of the river, determined, as it seemed, to hunt or
+starve us out.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this time of siege that I came to know, as I had not known
+before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad's love for me. While the
+life-tide was at its ebb and I was querulous and helpless weak, he was
+my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. And later, when the
+tide was fairly turned and I had found my soldier's appetite again, he
+spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess what risks he ran
+to fetch me dainties from the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>In this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from
+serving me. Once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and
+maize cake with plain cold water, I mourned the good wine idling in its
+bin at Jennifer House. At that, without a word to me, he took the whole
+night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the
+Jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its
+bringing had cost in toil and hazard.</p>
+
+<p>Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man
+at need&mdash;how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as
+before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone
+the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,&mdash;'twas Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's, I mistrusted, though Dick would never name the owner,
+and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If
+he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could
+not have made him tenderer.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom
+friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I
+have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough
+and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the
+border-born.</p>
+
+<p>But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart,
+a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress
+he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about
+who made a business of their chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>With his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure
+that I was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all
+the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. As you have guessed,
+I had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how I had staked his
+chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate&mdash;staked and lost
+it. Now that it was gone, I saw how I had missed the golden opportunity;
+how I had weakly hesitated when delay could only make the telling
+harder.</p>
+
+<p>By tacit consent we never spoke of Margery. Richard's silence hung upon
+despair, I thought; and as for mine, since the husband's road and the
+lover's lay so far apart, I could not bring myself to speak of her. But
+she was always first in my thoughts in that time of convalescence, as I
+made sure she was in his; and at the last the hidden thing between us
+was brought to light.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a night some three weeks or more after my fever turn. Our
+larder had run low again, and Jennifer had spent the earlier hours of
+the night abroad&mdash;to little purpose, as it chanced. 'Twas midnight or
+thereabouts when he came swearing in to tell me that the Tories were out
+again to harry our side of the river afresh, and to make a refugee's
+begging of a bag of meal a thing of peril.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They'll starve us out in shortest measure at this rate,&quot; he prophesied.
+&quot;They have trampled down all the standing corn for miles around, and
+this morning they burned the mill. 'Tis our notice to quit, and we'd
+best take it. There has been fighting to the south of us&mdash;a plenty of
+it&mdash;at Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, and elsewhere, and every man is
+needed. If you are strong enough to stand the march, we'll run the
+gantlet down the river in the pirogue and cut across from the lower ford
+to join Major Davie or Mr. Gates.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I was fit enough, and would do whatever he thought best. And then
+I took a step upon the forbidden ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Falconnet is still at Appleby Hundred?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you will join the army at the front and leave Margery to his tender
+mercies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His laugh was bitter; so bitter that I scarce knew it for Richard
+Jennifer's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mistress Margery Stair is well, and well content, as I told you once
+before. She has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well
+hanged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, Richard; you judge her over-harshly. I fear you do not love her as
+her lover should.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say you so? Listen: to-night I got as far as the manor house, being
+fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. God help me, Jack!
+I had it. They have scraped together all the Tory riff-raff this side of
+the river&mdash;Falconnet and the others&mdash;and are holding high revel at
+Appleby. Since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant
+enough of women of their own kidney, and I saw Madge dancing like any
+light o' love with every jackanapes that offered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In her father's house she could not well do less,&quot; I averred, cut to
+the heart, as he was, and yet without his younger lover's jealousy to
+make me unjust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or more,&quot; he added, savagely. &quot;'Tis as I say; she lacks nothing we can
+give her, and we'd as well be off about our business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think he never had it in his heart to leave her in any threat of
+danger. But from his point of view there was no danger threatening her
+save that which she seemed willing enough to rush upon&mdash;a life of titled
+misery as Lady Falconnet. I saw how he would see it; saw, too, that his
+was the saner summing of it up. And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He broke into my musings with a pointed question. &quot;What say you, Jack?
+'Tis but a little whiffet of a Tory jade who cares not the snap of her
+finger for either of us. The night is fine and dark. Shall we float the
+canoe and give them all the slip?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was how it came to turn upon a &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; of mine. I hesitated,
+I know not why. In the little pause the fire burned low between us, and
+the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye
+as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. The silence, too, was
+stifling. There was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of
+the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle
+in the throat of the dying.</p>
+
+<p>I've always made a scoff of superstition, and yet, my dears, a thousand
+questions in this life of ours must hang answerless to the crack of doom
+if you deny it standing-room. I knew no more than I have set down here
+of Margery's besetment; nay, I had every reason Richard Jennifer had to
+believe that she was well and well content, lacking nothing, save,
+mayhap, the freedom to marry where she chose.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, out of the stifling silence there came a sudden cry for help; a
+cry voiceless to the outward ear, but sharp and piercing to that finer
+inward sense; a cry so real that I would start and listen, marveling
+that Jennifer made no sign of having heard it.</p>
+
+<p>In the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a
+distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by
+the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and
+scattering the handful of fire where it struck.</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between
+his teeth upon our dallying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too late, by God!&quot; he cried. &quot;They've trapped us like a pair of blind
+moles!&quot; And with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear
+again when he found no room to swing it in.</p>
+
+<p>Having the handier weapon, I slipped out before him, creeping on hands
+and knees till I could see the leafy screen at the den's mouth, and the
+shimmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it. There was
+no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as Jennifer had
+left it.</p>
+
+<p>To make assurance sure, I would have scrambled to the bank above; but
+at the moment Jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so I crept back into
+the burrow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;See here,&quot; he said, excitedly. &quot;What a devil will you make of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again,
+and had sought and found the arrow. It was a blunt-head reed and no war
+shaft. And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken
+threads, was a little scroll of parchment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the Catawba's arrow,&quot; said Jennifer, though how he knew I could
+not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.</p>
+
+<p>Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of
+Captain Stuart's that I had found and lost again. And on the margin of
+it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the
+bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling
+beside me, murmuring her &quot;Holy Marys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Read it,&quot; said I. &quot;It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the
+heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about
+the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, yes,&quot; he broke in; &quot;I've spelled it out. But this line added at
+the bottom&mdash;surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in
+Madge's hand!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we
+deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither
+greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman&quot;&mdash;here
+was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and
+then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come
+to me out of the darkness and silence: &quot;<i>A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You make it out?&quot; said I, after a moment of strained silence.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. &quot;She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were
+boy and maid together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we
+were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>It was Jennifer who spoke first. &quot;'Twas meant for me,&quot; he said; and his
+voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot; said I, curtly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say it was!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you say the thing which is not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should
+have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. But he
+said no word of what had gone before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may give me the lie, if you like, John Ireton; I shall not strike
+you.&quot; He said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. Then he
+added, hotly: &quot;You know well that word was meant for me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this&mdash;God forgive me!&mdash;my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him
+for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye
+of every woman he should meet. &quot;She needs a man!&quot; I raged, lost now to
+every sense of decent justice, &quot;a man, I say! And to whom would she send
+if not to her&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I choked upon the word. He had risen with me, and we stood face to face
+in that grim earth-womb, snarling fiercely at each other across the
+narrow firelit space; two men with every tie to knit us close together,
+and yet&mdash;God save us all!&mdash;a pair of wild beasts strung up to the
+killing pitch because, forsooth, we must needs front each other across a
+deadline drawn by the finger of a woman!</p>
+
+<p>God knows what would have come of all this had my dear lad been as
+fierce a fool as I. 'Twas his good common sense that saved us both, I
+think, for when the savage rival madness was at its height he turned
+away, swearing we were the very pick and choice of a world of asses to
+stand thus feeling for each other's throats when, mayhap, the lady
+needed both of us.</p>
+
+<p>This brought me to my senses at a gallop, as you would guess; to them
+and to the lighting of the conscience fire within whereon to grill the
+wicked heart that but now had thirsted for a brother's blood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now God have mercy on us both!&quot; I groaned. &quot;Forgive me, Dick, if you
+can; I was as mad as any Bedlamite. If I have any claim on her, 'tis not
+of her good will, you may be sure. You have the baronet to fear&mdash;not
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head and pointed to the parchment&mdash;to the line in French.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Francis Falconnet was under the same roof with her&mdash;or at least in easy
+call&mdash;when she wrote that, Jack. He is no longer my rival&mdash;nor yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His word set me thinking, and I would fall to picking out the strands
+that jealous wrath had woven for me into the web of happenings. Setting
+aside the story brought by Ephraim Yeates, there was no certain proof
+that she had ever favored the Englishman; nay, more, till I had come to
+be madly jealous of Falconnet, I had made sure that Jennifer was the
+favored one.</p>
+
+<p>At this, as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the
+lightning's flash, I saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had
+brought&mdash;saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword I
+had let fall when Dick had found the arrow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it, Jack?&quot; he asked, gently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My sword!&quot; I gasped. &quot;We should have been half-way there by this.
+Yeates was misled. 'Tis Falconnet she fears. She was at bay&mdash;hark you,
+at bay and fair desperate. That word of hers to the baronet was her poor
+pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come on! You can strew the dust and ashes on me later. You said you
+loved her the better, and I do believe it now, Jack! You trusted her, as
+I did not. We'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever
+it may be; and after that is done I'll make my bow and leave you a fair
+field.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, nay; that you shall not, Dick,&quot; I began; but he was half-way
+through the narrow passage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword
+and the bearskin from his bed; and I was fain to follow quickly, leaving
+the protest all unfinished.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XVIII_WE_HEAR_NEWS_FROM_THE_SOUTH"></a><h2>XVIII<br />IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak
+when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and
+beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.</p>
+
+<p>Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm
+midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As
+I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the
+rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and
+sweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, were
+separate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse.
+Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to match
+the windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores sped
+backward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood that
+barely kissed the ripples in passing, the river lapped and gurgled,
+chuckling weirdly at the paddle plungings, and swirling aft in the
+longer reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a wavering
+finger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.</p>
+
+<p>With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was some
+little distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst with
+death, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion through
+the wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to come
+upon a sentry.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guarded
+than that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, spared
+by my father twenty years before to be a grouse and pheasant cover, and
+fetching a compass of half a mile or more across the maize fields, came
+in among the oaks and hickories of the manor grounds.</p>
+
+<p>Still there was no sight nor sound of any enemy; no light of candles at
+the house, or of camp-fires beneath the trees.</p>
+
+<p>A little way within the grove, where the interlacing tree-tops made the
+darkness like Egyptian night, Jennifer went on all fours to feel around
+as if in search of something on the sward. Whereat I called softly to
+know what he would be at.</p>
+
+<p>He rose, muttering, half as to himself: &quot;I thought I'd never be so far
+out of reckoning.&quot; Then to me: &quot;A few hours since, the Cherokees were
+encamped just here. You are standing in the ashes of their fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&quot; said I. &quot;Then they have gone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone from this safely enough, to be sure. They have been gone some
+hours; the cinders are cold and dew wet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So much the better,&quot; I would say, thinking only that now there would
+be the fewer enemies to fight.</p>
+
+<p>He clipt my arm suddenly, putting the value of an oath into his gripping
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come awake, man; this is no time to be a-daze!&quot; His whisper was a sharp
+behest, with a shake of the gripped arm for emphasis. &quot;If the Indians
+are gone, it means that the powder train has come and gone, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>I was still thinking, with less than a clod's wit, that this would send
+the baronet captain about his master's business, and so Margery would
+have surcease of him for a time, at least. But Jennifer fetched me awake
+with another whip-lash word or two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jack! has the night's work gone to your head? If Falconnet has got his
+marching orders you may be sure he's tried by hook or crook to play
+'safe bind, safe find,' with Madge. By heaven! 'twas that she was afeard
+of, and we are here too late! Come on!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With that he faced about and ran; and forgetting to loose his grip on my
+arm, took me with him till I broke away to have my sword hand free. So
+running, we came presently to the open space before the house, and,
+truly, it was well for us that the place was clean deserted; for by this
+we had both forgot the very name of prudence.</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer outran me to the door by half a length, and fell to hammering
+fiercely on the panel with the pommel of his broadsword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Open! Mr. Stair; open!&quot; he shouted, between the batterings; but it was
+five full minutes before the fan-light overhead began to show some faint
+glimmerings of a candle coming from the rooms beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled from
+within.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be off, you runagates! Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out
+his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching of
+the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. There
+was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him
+on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs,
+breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, went
+screeching over us.</p>
+
+<p>Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing
+off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with a
+splintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It
+was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the
+old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave
+it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well
+blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing
+spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.</p>
+
+<p>We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither,
+as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which
+he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was
+alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his
+loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders
+of the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name till
+he should have his cue from us.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathing
+space, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine in
+any bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and propped
+him in the corner of the high-backed hall settle.</p>
+
+<p>The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reigned
+supreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreck
+and litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struck
+off, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky with
+spilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass.</p>
+
+<p>I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup to
+pour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jennifer
+and his charge. The old man had come to some better sensing of
+things,&mdash;he had been vastly more frightened than hurt, as I
+suspected,&mdash;and to Richard's eager questionings was able to give some
+feebly querulous replies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they're gone&mdash;all gone, curse 'em; and they've taken every plack
+and bawbee they could lay their thieving hands upon,&quot; he mumbled. &quot;'Tis
+like the dogs; to stay on here and eat and drink me out of house and
+home, and then to scurry off when I'm most like to need protection.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Madge?&quot; says Richard. &quot;Is she safe in bed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's a jade!&quot; was all the answer he got. Then the old man sat up and
+peered around the end of the settle to where I stood, cup and bottle in
+hand. &quot;'Tis a Christian thought,&quot; he quavered. &quot;Give me a sup of the
+wine, man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I served him and had a Scottish blessing for my wastefulness, because,
+forsooth, the broken bottle spilt a thimbleful in the pouring. I saw he
+did not recognize me, and was well enough content to let it rest thus.</p>
+
+<p>Richard suffered him to drink in peace, but when the cup was empty he
+renewed his asking for Margery. At this the master of the house,
+heartened somewhat by my father's good madeira, made shift to get upon
+his feet in some tremulous fashion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madge, d'ye say? She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced
+deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie
+Jennifer!&quot; he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to
+the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all
+that he should have learned from never any other lips but mine own. But
+Richard himself parried the impending stroke of truth, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So she is safe and well, Mr. Stair, 'tis all I ask to know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is safe enough; safer by far than you are at this minute, my young
+cock-a-hoop rebel, now that the king&mdash;God save him!&mdash;has his own again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned quickly on the broad door-stone to look within. Out of doors
+the early August dawn was graying mistily overhead, but in the house the
+sputtering tallow dip still struggled feebly with the gloom. They stood
+facing each other, these two, my handsome lad, the pick and choice of a
+comely race, looking, for all his toils and vigils, fresh and fit; and
+the old man in his woolen dressing-gown, his wig awry, and his lean face
+yellow in the candle-light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is that you say, Mr. Stair?&quot; says Dick. &quot;The king&mdash;but that is only
+the old Tory cry. There will never be a king again this side of the
+water.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man reached out and hooked a lean finger in the lad's
+buttonhole. &quot;Say you so, Richard Jennifer? Then you will never have
+heard the glorious news?&quot; This with a leer that might have been of
+triumph or the mere whetting of gossip eagerness&mdash;I could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; says Richard, with much indifference.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hear it, then. 'Twas at Camden, four days since. They came together in
+the murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor fool
+Gates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, is
+captured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds.
+And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with Sumter
+at Fishing Creek and caught him napping. Whereupon, Charlie McDowell and
+the over-mountain men, seeing all was lost, broke their camp on the
+Broad and took to their heels, every man jack of them for himself. So ye
+see, Dickie Jennifer, there's never a cursed corporal's guard left in
+either Carolina to stand in the king's way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson got
+by heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hope
+that it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truth
+appear in answer to a curt question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis beyond doubt?&mdash;all this, Mr. Stair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old loyalist&mdash;loyalist now, if never certainly before&mdash;sat down on
+the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded
+like the crumpling of new parchment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest you
+learn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. There
+were some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here no
+longer ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man!
+but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short of
+gospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser's
+wine cellar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye no
+ill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'll
+hang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll say
+naught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir,
+and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'll
+enter a <i>nolle prosequi</i> on that till you're amnestied and back, then
+you can pay me the damage of the broken lock and we'll cry quits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this my straightforward Richard snorted in wrathful derision. However
+much he loved the daughter, 'twas clear he had small regard for the
+father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seeing we came to do you a service, Mr. Stair, I think we may set the
+blunderbuss and the handful of slugs over against the smashed door. And
+that fetches me back to our errand here. You say Madge is safe. Does
+that mean that you have spirited her away since last night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dinna fash yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for your
+betters, sir!&quot; rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as he
+did now and then in fear or anger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Still I would know what you mean when you say she is safe,&quot; says
+Richard, whose determination to crack a nut was always proportioned to
+the hardness of the shell.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Stair cursed him roundly for an impertinent jackanapes, and then
+gave him his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis none of your business, Dickie Jennifer, but you may know and be
+hanged to you! She rode home with the Witherbys last night after the
+rout, and will be by this safe away in t'other Carolina where your
+cursed Whiggeries darena lift head or hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of her own free will?&quot; Dick persisted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damme! yes; bag, baggage, serving wench and all. Now will you be off
+about your business before some spying rascal lays an information
+against me for harboring you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard joined me on the door-stone. The dawn was in its twilight now,
+and the great trees on the lawn were taking gray and ghostly shapes in
+the dim perspective.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You heard what he had to say?&quot; said he.</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems we have missed our cue on all sides,&quot; he went on, not without
+bitterness. &quot;I would we might have had a chance to fire a shot or two
+before the ship went down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Camden, you mean? That's but the beginning; the real battles are all
+to be fought yet, I should say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head despondently. &quot;You are a newcomer, Jack, and you know
+not how near outworn the country is. Gilbert Stair has the right of it
+when he says there will be nothing to stop the redcoats now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I called to mind the resolute little handful under Captain Abram Forney,
+one of many such, he had told me, and would not yield the point.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There will be plenty of fighting yet, and we must go to bear a hand
+where it is needed most,&quot; said I. &quot;Where will that be, think you? At
+Charlotte?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This time 'tis you who are the laggard in love, John Ireton. Will you
+go and leave Mistress Margery wanting an answer to her poor little cry
+for help?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged. &quot;What would you? Has she not taken her affair into her own
+hands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God knows how much or little she has had to say about it,&quot; said he.
+&quot;But I mean to know, too, before I put my name on any company roll.&quot; We
+were among the trees by this, moving off for safety's sake, since the
+day was coming; and he broke off short to wheel and face me as one who
+would throttle a growling cur before it has a chance to bite. &quot;We know
+the worst of each other now, Jack, and we must stand to our compact. Let
+us see her safe beyond peradventure of a doubt; then I'm with you to
+fight the redcoats single-handed, if you like. I know what you will
+say&mdash;that the country calls us now more than ever; but there must needs
+be some little rallying interval after all this disaster, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have done, Richard,&quot; said I. &quot;Set the pace and mayhap I can keep step
+with you. What do you propose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This; that we go to Witherby Hall and get speech with Mistress Madge,
+if so be&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stay a moment; who are these Witherbys?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dyed-in-the-wool Tory family seated some ten miles across the line in
+York district. True, 'tis a rank Tory hotbed over there, and we shall
+run some risk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never name risk to me if you love me, Richard Jennifer!&quot; I broke in.
+&quot;What is your plan?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His answer was prompt and to the point. &quot;To press on afoot through the
+forest till we come to the York settlement; then to borrow a pair of
+Tory horses and ride like gentlemen. Are you game for it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated. &quot;I see no great risk in all this, and whatever the hazard,
+'tis less for one than for two. You'd best go alone, Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He saw my meaning; that I would stand aside and let him be her succor if
+she needed help. But he would not have it so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, doggedly. &quot;We'll go together, and she shall choose
+between us for a champion, if she is in the humor to honor either of us.
+That is what 'twill come to in the end; and I warn you fairly, John
+Ireton, I shall neither give nor take advantage in this strife. I said
+last night that I would stand aside, but that I can not&mdash;not till she
+herself says the killing word with her own lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that word will be&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That she loves another man. Come; let us be at it; we should be well
+out of this before the plantation people are astir.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XIX_A_STUMBLING_HORSE_BROUGHT_TIDINGS"></a><h2>XIX<br />HOW A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to the
+fields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarters
+where the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and so
+to cross in our canoe.</p>
+
+<p>The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair
+weather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloud
+bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize
+blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.</p>
+
+<p>In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave
+but for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the higher
+tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly to
+deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where
+there was none.</p>
+
+<p>Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned
+the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by
+keeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin wood was free of
+undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. Fireside tradition
+on the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearly
+burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer.
+I vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for the
+fact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-like
+stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's own
+building, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countless
+trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined
+arches overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, as
+I have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction
+served. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at
+feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on
+we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset
+undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle
+with the bushes.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purring
+of the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff
+the air.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smoke,&quot; he said, briefly, in answer to my query. &quot;A camp-fire, with
+meat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I could not&mdash;did not, at all events.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up your
+woodcraft and we'll stalk it.&quot; And, suiting the action to the word, he
+dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of
+the thicket.</p>
+
+<p>I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze
+with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a
+youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was
+well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could
+be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and
+tiger-strong to spring.</p>
+
+<p>In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the
+brink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow
+ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bit
+of grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it was
+sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a
+branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if
+to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned;
+and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a
+cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.</p>
+
+<p>One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirt
+and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leather
+fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he wore
+a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap
+his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the
+other tasselings in countenance. The hunting-shirt was belted at the
+waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to
+serve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs crossed upon his
+shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the
+knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.</p>
+
+<p>The other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all our
+southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of
+ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his
+leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an
+arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the
+scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, but
+far more vicious looking.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine,
+neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling must
+needs let out a yell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, by all that's lucky!&quot; he cried, and would have leaped to his feet.
+But at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was sent
+tumbling with the small landslide of clay down upon the twain at the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>It went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at the
+fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot
+brought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was the
+quicker, Richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, I
+think. At the trigger-pulling instant the Catawba thrust the thick of
+his hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless for
+Jennifer, into the palm of the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah!&quot; he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. &quot;No want kill Captain
+Jennif', hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ephraim Yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand held
+fast by the gun-flint.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm daddled, fair and square, Cap'n Dick!&quot; he declared. &quot;Jest one
+more shake of a dead lamb's tail, and I'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartain
+sure! I allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-away
+behint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick laughed and called to me to follow as I could. And his answer to
+the old borderer was no answer at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with that
+deer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton and
+I, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work
+hospitably on the meat supply. Meanwhile I came upon the scene,
+something less hurriedly than Richard. Ephraim Yeates looked me up and
+down with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and a
+third for the German ritter-boots I wore.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Umph!&quot; said he. &quot;Now if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighter
+again! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on a
+stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!&quot; Then to me, most pointedly:
+&quot;Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez I
+allow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up on
+the briars.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair's
+parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates,&quot; said I. &quot;I am too near
+famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat
+upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whoop!&quot; he yelled. &quot;No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out
+to call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, you
+infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye
+in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail
+top-knot o' your'n! <i>Yip-pee!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
+might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
+stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
+countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
+capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.</p>
+
+<p>For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
+senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
+out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
+wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
+promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
+trick&mdash;a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift&mdash;which sent
+him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
+landslide.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
+When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
+sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put it there, stranger,&quot; he said. &quot;I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
+Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn <i>and</i> pan-meat
+with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
+friend in the big woods&mdash;a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
+or'narily whop his weight in wildcats&mdash;why, old Eph's your man; from now
+on, <i>if</i> not sooner.&quot; And in this wise began an alliance the like of
+which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
+colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.</p>
+
+<p>As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,
+pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he
+would never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon the
+deer's meat which was by this time&mdash;not cooked, to be sure, but seared a
+little on the outside in true hunter fashion.</p>
+
+<p>While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return
+Ephraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to the
+letter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery's
+father had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered to
+the four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted
+and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was
+carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of
+his men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming in
+all the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the
+outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as King
+George himself could wish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like
+all the others?&quot; Richard would ask.</p>
+
+<p>The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed
+meat. &quot;I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on
+the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba's assent was a guttural &quot;Wah!&quot; and Ephraim Yeates went on to
+explain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, for
+spying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but
+'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twas
+a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to
+sneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; says Dick.</p>
+
+<p>The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to
+impale it on the forked toasting stick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's our
+A-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,
+heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'&mdash;which is good
+Injun-talk for anything ye like,&mdash;and so here we are, hot-foot on the
+trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alone?&quot; said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this
+chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.</p>
+
+<p>The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. &quot;We ain't sich tarnation
+big fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallop
+us, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. But
+there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and
+raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy
+left Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests had
+traveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet and
+his troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,
+or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistress Margery riding her
+own black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, had
+passed some two hours later.</p>
+
+<p>This was as we had hoped it might be; but when Dick's satisfaction
+would have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign for
+silence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to the
+ground. Whereat we all began likewise to listen, but I, for one, heard
+nothing till Yeates said: &quot;A hoss; a-taking the back track like old Jehu
+the son of Nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur,&quot; and then we all
+marked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.</p>
+
+<p>The old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, and
+caught up his rifle. &quot;Let's be a-moving,&quot; he said. &quot;We must make out to
+stop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's a
+rip-snorting that-away for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfast
+camp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, a
+negro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearing
+down to the ford. At sight of us, or else because he would not take the
+water at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily,
+carrying his skilless rider with him.</p>
+
+<p>We picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found his
+tongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to fire
+the blood in our veins&mdash;in Jennifer's and mine, at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yah!&quot; he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nigh
+strangled him. &quot;Yah! red debbil Injins kill ebberybody and tote off
+Mistis Marg'y and dat Jeanne 'ooman! Dat's what dey done!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XX_WE_STRIVE_AS_MEN_TO_RUN_A_RACE"></a><h2>XX<br />IN WHICH WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected
+account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all
+save the principal fact of the carrying off of Mistress Margery and her
+maid was hazy enough.</p>
+
+<p>Pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the
+foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party
+of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a
+creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress
+and her tire-woman had been captured.</p>
+
+<p>So far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen
+nothing. There had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black
+darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of Indian yells, shouts from the
+men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
+newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
+he knew no more till some one&mdash;his master, as he thought&mdash;kicked him
+alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
+Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
+and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
+his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,
+it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his
+orders was his master. In the darkness and confusion he could make sure
+of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and
+the wording of the message he carried.</p>
+
+<p>When we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him
+once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried
+council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one.
+Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim
+Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without
+a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for
+going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should
+promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy
+exhaustion, starvation and failure.</p>
+
+<p>We grew hot upon it, Richard and I; he with a young lover's unrecking
+rashness, and I with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn;
+and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba drew aside and let us have it out.
+Dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not
+above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age
+in my face and swearing hotly that I knew not so much as the alphabet of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>The taunts were passed in silence, since I would set them over against
+the irrevocable wrong I had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he
+could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of
+jealous wrath.</p>
+
+<p>But when he would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all
+unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a
+long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The
+hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer
+heat we would be forced to kill daily. On the other hand, with horses, a
+bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should be in some more
+hopeful case; and, notwithstanding the delay in starting, could make far
+better speed.</p>
+
+<p>For all the good it did I might have spared my pains and saved my
+breath. Jennifer broke me in the midst, crying out that I was even now
+killing the precious minutes; and so our ill-starred venture had its
+launching in the frenzied haste that seldom makes for speed. One small
+concession I wrung out of his impatience&mdash;this with the help of Yeates
+and the Catawba. We went back to the breakfast camp, rekindled the fire,
+and cooked what we could keep and carry of the venison.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this delay it was yet early in the forenoon of that
+memorable Sunday, the twentieth of August, when we set our faces
+southward and took up the line of march to the ford of the ambushment.
+By now the sky was wholly overcast, and the wind was blowing fresher in
+the tree-tops; but though as yet the storm held off, the air was the
+cooler for the threatened rain and this was truly a blessing, since the
+old hunter put us keen upon our mettle to keep pace with him.</p>
+
+<p>We marched in Indian file, Ephraim Yeates in the lead, Uncanoola at his
+heels, and the two of us heavier-footed ones bringing up the rear.
+Knowing the wooded wilderness by length and breadth, the old man held on
+through thick and thin, straight as an arrow to the mark; and so we had
+never a sight of the road again till we came out upon it suddenly at the
+ford of violence.</p>
+
+<p>Here I should have been in despair for the lack of any intelligible hint
+to point the way; and I think not even Jennifer, with all his woodcraft,
+could have read the record of the onfall as Yeates and the Catawba did.
+But for all the overlapping tangle of moccasin and hoof prints neither
+of these men of the forest was at fault, though ten minutes later even
+their skill must have been baffled, inasmuch as the first few spitting
+raindrops were pattering in the tree-tops when we came upon the ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's jest about what I was most afeard of,&quot; said the borderer, with a
+hasty glance skyward. &quot;Down on your hunkers, Chief, and help me read
+this sign afore the good Lord takes to sending His rain on the jest and
+the unjest,&quot; and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground
+like trained dogs nosing for a scent.</p>
+
+<p>We stood aside and watched them, Richard and I, realizing that we were
+of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the
+laying on of hearty blows. After the closest scrutiny, which took
+account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged
+until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in
+the dusty road, Yeates and the Indian gave over and came to join us
+under the sheltering branches of an oak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a mighty cur'is sign; most mighty cur'is,&quot; quoth the hunter,
+slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his
+rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every
+precious grain. &quot;Ez I allow, I never heerd tell of any Injuns a-doing
+that-away afore; have you, Chief? hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba's negative was his guttural &quot;Wah,&quot; and Ephraim Yeates,
+having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his
+powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying. Them Injuns fixed up an ambush<i>ment</i>,
+blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up
+with a tomahawk and knife rush,&mdash;lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb
+daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. And, spite of all this here
+rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole
+enduring scrimmage! Mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? And that ain't
+all: some o' them same Injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing
+boots with spurs onto 'em. What say, Chief?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other.
+&quot;Sebben Injun; one pale-face,&quot; he said, in confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty
+curse to speed it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Falconnet!&quot; said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon,&quot; drawled
+Yeates. &quot;Maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving
+at.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent. 'Twas out of all reason
+to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a
+terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. It was a curious
+mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yit that ain't all. Whilst some o' the Injuns was a-whooping it up
+acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their
+city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the
+side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks
+him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after
+which he climbs <i>his</i> hoss and makes tracks hisself&mdash;not to ketch up
+with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way,&quot; pointing across
+the creek and down the road to the southward.</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest
+fashion, and after all could only say: &quot;You are sure you have the
+straight of it, Eph?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. &quot;Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of
+your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read
+them sign like they'd ort to be read?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye&mdash;sharp nose&mdash;sharp tongue, sometime.
+Sign no can lie when he read 'um.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer turned to me. &quot;What say you, Jack? 'Tis all far enough beyond
+me, I'll confess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do
+seemed plain enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis Mistress Margery's hazard that
+concerns us,&quot; I would say. And then to Ephraim Yeates: &quot;Will this rain
+kill the trail, think you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head dubiously. &quot;I dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o'
+differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. Ez it starts out, with
+the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the
+run.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then let us be at it,&quot; said I. &quot;We can very well afford to let the
+mystery untangle itself as we go.&quot; And with this the pursuit began in
+relentless earnest.</p>
+
+<p>The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right
+angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the
+stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in
+the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could
+follow at a smart dog-trot.</p>
+
+<p>In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied
+Jennifer and me. They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the
+racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse.
+Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when,
+well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and
+to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow
+Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and
+gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.</p>
+
+<p>This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began
+again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail,
+measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars
+for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. When we came up with
+him he was mumbling to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Um-hm; jes' so. They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure;
+larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. Now, says I to
+myself, what's the tarnation hurry? Ain't they got all the time there is
+to get where they're a-going, immejitly, <i>if</i> not sooner?&quot; Then he
+turned upon me. &quot;Cap'n John, can't you and the youngster lay your heads
+side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up
+to? It do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that
+Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave
+a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could
+follow at a canter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was
+to the full as blank as his. I made sure some deep-laid plot was at the
+bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the
+wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and
+sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all
+its devilish ingenuity.</p>
+
+<p>But now &quot;Forward,&quot; was the word, and we fell in line again, and again
+the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack
+of weariness. Happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day
+dusk came early; and though Yeates and the Indian, running now with
+their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long
+after Richard Jennifer and I were bat-blind for any seeing of the
+hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were,
+fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a
+scanty supper.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter
+fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to
+sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the
+full as miserable.</p>
+
+<p>Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget;
+a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and
+step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous
+hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame
+for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp
+foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her
+into sending the appeal for help?</p>
+
+<p>With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message,
+hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own.
+Though I made sure she did not love me,&mdash;had never loved me as other
+than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
+the pale of sentiment,&mdash;yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
+her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.</p>
+
+<p>Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
+what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
+were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
+been sent.</p>
+
+<p>His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
+his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
+creature&mdash;as, truly, he was&mdash;sleeping with all the senses alert to
+spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
+him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
+shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
+doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,
+making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of
+some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in
+that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender
+chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time
+when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in
+her service.</p>
+
+<p>So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of
+service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather
+fresh strength for the new day's measure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXI_WE_KEPT_LENTEN_VIGILS_IN_TRINITYTIDE"></a><h2>XXI<br />HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to
+picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in
+the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details
+have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are
+often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.</p>
+
+<p>So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest
+ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper
+and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the
+plain-marked trail to guide us.</p>
+
+<p>At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles
+of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the
+August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the
+pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling
+mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no
+woman-ridden horse could penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances
+would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with
+here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn,
+whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and
+arabesques against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain
+would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the
+trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay,
+sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of
+fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in
+a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting
+us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a
+soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless
+mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or
+exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop
+forever.</p>
+
+<p>This was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of
+strenuous onpressing. But through that web the scarlet thread of famine
+shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the
+days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair
+skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present
+specter of starvation.</p>
+
+<p>You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty
+memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts
+the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him
+onward. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned
+upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. One was Yeates's
+killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we
+had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's
+code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also,
+I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the
+hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And,
+being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the
+hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.</p>
+
+<p>The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days
+farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we
+could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and
+enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for
+game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for
+another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along
+the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this
+haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or
+to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and
+now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to
+the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the
+famine edge of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on
+any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the
+unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to
+set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian
+there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the
+less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and
+held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old
+hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can
+close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates,
+striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry
+and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest
+discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder.
+Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been
+less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his
+own would have shamed us into following where he led.</p>
+
+<p>We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the
+pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before
+Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing
+in upon our quarry.</p>
+
+<p>The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the
+beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching
+out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless
+well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their
+impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let
+us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper
+food soon took toll of speed.</p>
+
+<p>So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last
+so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires
+were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer&mdash;could
+hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent
+us double.</p>
+
+<p>The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the
+fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air
+in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an
+oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher
+with every added mile of westering.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a
+rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly
+from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part
+of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly
+sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim
+Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped
+behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running
+at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped
+and swallowed him.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless
+noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good
+time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted
+echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's
+rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all
+a-clamor with mocking repetitions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!&quot; growled the
+marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. &quot;That there's what comes
+o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the
+gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you
+two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them
+sharp-p'inted sticks in his&mdash;The Lord be praised for all His marcies!
+the chief's got him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping
+with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell
+had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old
+borderer's bullet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge,&quot; was all we could get out
+of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and
+fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.</p>
+
+<p>This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a
+little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well
+in hand. So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by
+a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. Nevertheless, we
+were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew
+to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither
+seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.</p>
+
+<p>That night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a
+swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. We reached
+this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into
+the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. But
+though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was
+exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to
+wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.</p>
+
+<p>We guessed at it a while, Richard and I, and then gave it up until we
+might have the help of better daylight. But the old borderer's curiosity
+was not so readily postponed. Cutting a slim pole from a sapling
+thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping
+branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond
+a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for
+swimming.</p>
+
+<p>Satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us
+to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his
+long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes
+the nearer to the ground.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXII_THE_FATES_GAVE_LARGESS_OF_DESPAIR"></a><h2>XXII<br />HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us cause
+to wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indian
+pipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipe
+was aglow he told us of his findings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spell
+to throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?&quot; said I; for
+the night was black as Erebus.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts,&quot; this as calmly as
+if we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-defined
+trace of foot-prints. &quot;Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped on
+t'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. I
+saw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God!&quot; says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the women
+were already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with an
+eager question: &quot;How does she look, Ephraim?&mdash;tell me how she looks!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen at him!&quot; said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. &quot;How
+in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about?
+There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been
+dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week.
+Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on
+'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' last
+idintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a couple
+of Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmints
+their orders, partic'lar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Show us the way, Eph Yeates!&quot; he burst out impatiently. &quot;We are wasting
+a deal of precious time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making no
+move to head a sortie.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o'
+hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full
+redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez
+soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle
+down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly,
+<i>if</i> not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by
+rampaging 'round too soon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited,
+taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and laying
+our plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, or
+rather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move upon
+the enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover the
+ford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed,
+we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal,
+which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in and
+smite, giving no quarter.</p>
+
+<p>The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, saying
+that a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Erati
+tribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-setting
+on ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. With
+them gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for a
+skimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore and
+wherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and come
+again, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth that
+we were not like to be over-merciful.</p>
+
+<p>But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspected
+side of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily on
+the sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinced
+a most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hour
+the air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermon
+paused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his knees
+to pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories of
+the grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.</p>
+
+<p>Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully
+understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he
+was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness
+that when he smote the &quot;Amalekites,&quot; as he would call them&mdash;red skin or
+red coat&mdash;he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that
+British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very
+edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall
+upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his
+prayers were like his blows&mdash;of the biting sort, full of Scriptural
+anathema upon the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most
+godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that
+since he left out the oaths in common speech,&mdash;as, truly, he did,&mdash;he
+would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon
+his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have
+said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the
+sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of
+place.</p>
+
+<p>It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead
+piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but
+when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I
+reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here
+purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have
+not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to
+weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to
+strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil
+moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old
+field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward
+the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little
+good-will.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!&quot; he asserted,
+angrily. &quot;Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst
+you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no
+soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your
+damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck&mdash;that these very
+present seconds are priceless.&quot; Whereupon he flung himself face down in
+the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully
+over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.</p>
+
+<p>Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the
+old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck
+of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping
+through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time
+precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept
+down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of
+crossing.</p>
+
+<p>Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of
+quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse
+to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire
+like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. The
+seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins,
+which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.
+Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest
+sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half
+awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm
+and he was nodding to forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I
+could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It should be easy enough&mdash;what think you?&quot; he whispered; and then, with
+a sudden grasp upon my wrist: &quot;You are cool and steady-nerved, John
+Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, I grant you that, Dick,&quot; said I, making sure that his excitement
+would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added,
+sincerely enough: &quot;She has never given me the right to love her at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God help her at this pass!&quot; he said, more to himself than to me; and
+then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim
+Yeates for this fresh delay.</p>
+
+<p>It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.
+Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe Captain
+Jennif' see 'um, hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were
+nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The
+Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared
+to be; then he set the doubt in words. &quot;Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only
+one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep <i>both</i> eye
+on war-path!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within
+arm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but the
+old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle
+to my fingers' ends.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How will it be, Eph?&quot; Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. &quot;We can
+make it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick.
+She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like
+greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought
+n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country;
+but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the
+ford where them varmints made out to cross.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God!&quot; said Dick, deep in his throat; &quot;more time to be killed! By&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the
+encampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly and
+clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!&quot; he cut in. And then in a whisper
+meant for no ear but mine: &quot;The Lord be marciful to that little gal,
+Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away&mdash;the game's afoot, and we ain't
+in it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a
+handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry
+wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the
+keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy
+background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in
+orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry
+branches their leader gave the command to charge.</p>
+
+<p>What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest
+space. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings,
+raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.
+As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the
+yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemen
+narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel
+in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and
+vanished as if by magic.</p>
+
+<p>With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the
+sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and
+it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din,
+being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of
+the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and
+when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees,
+the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The hoss-captain!&quot; muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we
+did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across
+the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery,&quot; said the baronet,
+mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and
+got them well by heart and letter-perfect. &quot;These slippery savages have
+given us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet,
+calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months
+since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred,
+and the interval&mdash;or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of
+the captive flight&mdash;had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had
+stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pass
+from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping
+from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe
+her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful
+than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you, Sir Francis&mdash;for myself and for poor Jeanne,&quot; she said.
+&quot;You have come to take us back to my father?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.
+But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know,
+and our mission will not brook an hour's delay&mdash;indeed, we are here
+only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for
+theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to
+the west; but I do assure you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a
+despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing
+hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and
+wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all
+that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if
+only with a single soldier for a guard.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he
+had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his
+life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused
+her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his
+suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a
+true, clean-hearted woman at bay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain
+Falconnet?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these
+brutal savages, Mistress Margery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down
+and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the
+scornful eyes were whipping him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen!&quot; she said. &quot;When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in
+the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I
+saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken
+freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor
+Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was
+taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have
+dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did
+with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?
+'Twas a bold game, <i>ma petite</i>, but you have lost and I have won, for my
+game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,
+be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. <i>Savez-vous un homme
+d&eacute;sesp&eacute;r&eacute;, ma ch&eacute;rie?</i> I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry
+you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might
+have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go
+where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady
+Falconnet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,
+was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four
+would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;
+nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of
+us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would
+be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.</p>
+
+<p>So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass and
+brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised
+his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because
+the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare
+the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come
+within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping
+coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we
+would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped
+us with a hand for each.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; none o' that!&quot; he whispered, hoarsely. &quot;Ye'd drown like rats,
+and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.
+Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a
+good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that
+ain't teched yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear
+doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and
+not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless
+little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet,&quot; she
+said, coldly. And then: &quot;You can take me with you, if you choose, having
+the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is
+all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can not, you say?&quot; He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his
+horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the
+women, he finished out the sentence. &quot;Listen you, in your turn, Mistress
+Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's
+house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry
+you for very shame's sake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has
+ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian
+discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide
+snake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think
+she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight
+helped her to say, quickly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. &quot;You will keep faith with
+me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set
+her foot upon the weapon in the grass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<a name="image-3"><!-- Image 3 --></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/image3.jpg"><img src="images/image3-tb.jpg" height="500" width="326"
+alt="Illustration"
+title="Illustration" /></a>
+</center>
+
+<p>He struck back viciously. &quot;Then, by heaven, you'd best make the
+occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are
+has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save
+you from that, my Mistress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured
+and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one
+who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet,&quot; she said, facing him
+bravely to the last. &quot;When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will give
+me leave to die as my mother's daughter should.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bah!&quot; said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we
+looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses,
+and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives
+as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers
+of the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and
+on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the
+horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse
+me bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments,
+John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had
+good hope to win!&quot; he cried. &quot;One little hour I begged for, and that
+hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew,
+and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would
+eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in
+sheer abandonment of rage and misery.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXIII_WE_KEPT_THE_FEAST_OF_BITTER_HERBS"></a><h2>XXIII<br />HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to
+me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our
+chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to
+attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to
+the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford
+beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the
+earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.</p>
+
+<p>So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of
+afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame
+as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair <i>and</i> easy,&quot; he protested. &quot;Let's give
+that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow,
+there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things.
+To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here
+dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had
+ne'er a man o' God 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going
+to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, <i>if</i> not
+sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n Dick did try his hand that-away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; and I would now we had listened to him,&quot; said I, gloomily enough.
+&quot;We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another.
+Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder
+train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered
+us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy
+forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my
+Lord Cornwallis's headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for
+merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from
+yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I
+be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on
+the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope
+when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a
+certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long
+after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the
+full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the kind o' talk!&quot; was the old man's comment. &quot;Now we'll set to
+work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is
+crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe
+you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd
+vouchsafe to give us scalps <i>and</i> provender. For our onfaithfulness He's
+seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a
+widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness,
+yit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when
+Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should
+make another effort to find the ford.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into
+trouble,&quot; quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way
+cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. &quot;If Cap'n Dick
+rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only
+say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the
+chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when
+his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone
+over his head. Selah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy
+dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far
+beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along
+the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel
+and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had
+lost.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Right about here-away is where they made out to cross,&quot; he announced;
+&quot;the whole enduring passel of 'em, ez I reckon&mdash;our seven varmints and
+the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till
+we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's
+edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and
+so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the
+water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there
+was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our
+faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with
+the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.</p>
+
+<p>Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's horsemen set us
+warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been
+left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left
+behind,&quot; said Yeates, in a whisper. &quot;I jing! that's jest the one thing I
+was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last
+living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the
+belly-pinch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune
+favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two
+horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag
+of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive
+party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.</p>
+
+<p>With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And
+now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few
+handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn
+stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag
+of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on
+our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn
+into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the
+baking-stones.</p>
+
+<p>In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard
+bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten&mdash;with
+what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever
+know&mdash;we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and
+far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had
+entangled us.</p>
+
+<p>For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear
+lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and
+sure; a <i>coup de main</i> which should atone in one shrewd push for the
+sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to
+the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else
+to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and
+protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old
+chronicler's day.</p>
+
+<p>Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh
+that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century
+nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on&mdash;in the story-books. Also, I
+would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace
+of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call &quot;heroics&quot;
+were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural
+heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm
+that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean
+fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry
+world to live in.</p>
+
+<p>So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and,
+after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us
+while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to snatch an hour
+or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin
+afresh.</p>
+
+<p>In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw
+not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid
+on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: &quot;Are you waking yet,
+Jack?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and
+shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a
+friend&mdash;to fly out at you like a madman as I did,&quot; he added, by way of
+fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding
+him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as
+you will some day know, Dick, my lad,&quot; said I, hovering, as a coward
+always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never
+make.</p>
+
+<p>He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to
+blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I
+owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in
+that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left
+me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn you!&quot; I broke in roughly, &quot;will you never have done and go to
+sleep?&quot; And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh
+bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXIV_WE_FOUND_THE_SUNKEN_VALLEY"></a><h2>XXIV<br />HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the
+wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping
+unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that the
+players rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, never
+faltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip their
+kinship with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not so
+endowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase,
+with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakeful
+eye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept;
+would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice as
+great.</p>
+
+<p>We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, and
+were the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter was
+already out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and was
+grinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. Dick sat up in
+his leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, Jack,&quot; said he; &quot;if ever we win out of this coil with a full day
+to spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, I
+promise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough to
+leave a bad taste in the mouth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye; but the taste may be washed out,&quot; said I. &quot;I am for a dip in the
+river; what say you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in the
+spring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.
+'Twas most marvelous refreshing; and with appetites sharp set and
+whetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in time
+to give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with the
+hindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of the
+dawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we were
+made to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the early
+morning scouting.</p>
+
+<p>Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle of
+reconnaissance around our halting place, &quot;to get the p'ints of the
+compass,&quot; as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we had
+found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and
+well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder
+train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and
+arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short
+march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's
+position.</p>
+
+<p>For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. The
+Indian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of the
+cavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straight
+into the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rocky
+defile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements to
+narrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to a
+thundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powder
+convoy had vanished into thin air.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.
+We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women;
+but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the
+powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were
+wholly unprepared.</p>
+
+<p>So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched;
+and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we had
+broken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to the
+gorge of disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left
+swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for
+its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and
+lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valley
+narrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base of
+the tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on the
+right.</p>
+
+<p>In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's
+stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the
+right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and
+plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side
+of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down
+into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.</p>
+
+<p>As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve the
+mystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouring
+torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the
+cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended
+abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the
+low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet
+and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier
+stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed
+it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently
+came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof
+print, new or old.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est
+thing I ever chugged up ag'inst,&quot; was the old borderer's comment, when
+we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to
+the mystery. &quot;What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Uncanoola shook his head. &quot;Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go
+down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke&mdash;w'at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative.
+&quot;Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the
+good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'
+the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of
+up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a
+fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its
+underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed
+into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood
+which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive
+with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was
+only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates
+caught at it eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;It do take
+an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!
+Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'
+sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick
+asked: &quot;What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety
+of it in words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened
+the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, fire,&quot; says Richard, beginning, as I did, to see some glimmering
+of light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In course. And it come from yonder, didn't it?&quot; pointing to the cavern
+under the cliff. &quot;More than that, 'twas cut wi' a hatchet&mdash;this fresh
+end of it&mdash;no longer ago than last night, at the furdest; the pitch that
+the fire fried out'n it is all soft and gummy, yit. Gentlemen all:
+whenst we find where this here creek comes out into daylight again we're
+a-going to find the hoss-captain and the whole enduring passel o'
+redskins and redcoats, immejitly, <i>if</i> not sooner!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What comment this startling announcement would have evoked I know not,
+for at the moment of its utterance the Catawba went flat upon the
+ground, making most urgent signs for us to do likewise. What he had seen
+we all saw a flitting instant later; the painted face of a Cherokee
+warrior as a setting for a pair of fierce basilisk eyes peering out of
+the low-arched cavern whence the stream issued, an apparition looking
+for all the world like a dismembered head floating on the surface of the
+outgushing flood.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat,
+and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers. A crook in the
+stream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from the
+basilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another into
+the mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main river;
+but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows in
+passing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain a
+great boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon the
+scene of our late surprisal.</p>
+
+<p>By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage for
+a tragedy which might have been ours. One by one a score of heads with
+painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one
+the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the
+water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the
+stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching
+figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.</p>
+
+<p>Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his
+thigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillern
+and simples,&quot; he whispered. &quot;Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up the
+trace a hour 'r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o' that there spy, and
+was too dad-blame' biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What spy?&quot; says Dick, matching the hunter's low whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here 'twixt dawn and
+daybreak, <i>to</i> be sure. He waited till we broke camp and then took out
+up here ahead of us to tell his chief 'twas e'ena'most time to set the
+trap for three white simples and a red one. Friends, I'm a-telling ye
+plain that the sperrit's a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on my
+hunkers and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For heaven's sake, don't do it here and now!&quot; gasped Dick. &quot;Let's get
+out of this spider's-web while we may.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as it
+would seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerous
+neighborhood of the ambushment. When we had pushed on somewhat higher up
+the gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which it
+served as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.</p>
+
+<p>Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in some
+hidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream was
+one of the approaches, 'twas plain that we must climb to some height
+whence we could command a wider view.</p>
+
+<p>We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used by
+the entire company: this though the conclusion left the vanishing trail
+an unsolved riddle. For if the women could have been dragged through
+the low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not&mdash;to
+say nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such a
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>So we addressed ourselves to the ascent of the northern mountain; though
+Richard and I would first beg a little space in which to drain the water
+from our boots, and to wring some pounds' weight of it from our clothes.
+That done, we fell in line once more; and being so fortunate as to hit
+upon a ravine which led to the cliff-crowned summit, the climb was shorn
+of half its toil and difficulty. Nevertheless, by the sun's height it
+was well on in the forenoon before we came out, perspiring, like sappers
+in a steam bath, upon the mountain top.</p>
+
+<p>As Yeates had guessed, this northern mountain proved to be a lofty
+table-land. So far as could be seen, the summit was an undulating plain,
+less densely forested than the valley, but with a thick sprinkling of
+pines to make the still, hot air heavy with their resinous fragrance. As
+it chanced, our ravine of ascent headed well back from the cliff edge,
+so we must needs fetch a compass through the pine groves before we could
+win out to any commanding point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The old borderer took his bearings by the sun and laid the course
+quartering to bring us out as near as might be on the heights above the
+gorge. But when we had gone a little way, a thinning of the wood ahead
+warned us that we were approaching some nearer break in the table-land.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later we four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking
+abroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you can
+a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war,
+sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general
+level of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension of
+two miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length;
+bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep,
+forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream winding
+through grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end to
+end of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene we
+looked upon.</p>
+
+<p>But what concerned us most was a sight to make us crouch quickly lest
+sharp eyes below should descry us on the sky-line of the cliff. Pitched
+on one of the grassy savannas by the stream, so fairly beneath us that
+the smallest cannon planted on our cliff could have dropped a shot into
+it, was the camp of the powder train.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXV_UNCANOOLA_TRAPPED_THE_GREAT_BEAR"></a><h2>XXV<br />HOW UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Twas Richard Jennifer who first broke the noontide silence of the
+mountain top, voicing the query which was thrusting sharp at all of us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now how in the name of all the fiends did they make shift to burrow
+from yonder bag-bottom into this?&quot; he would say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I allow, that's jest what the good Lord fotched us here for&mdash;to find
+out,&quot; was Yeates's rejoinder. &quot;Do you and the chief, Cap'n John,
+circumambylate this here pitfall yon way, whilst Cap'n Dick and I go
+t'other way 'round. By time we've made the circuit and j'ined company
+again, I reckon we'll know for sartain whether 'r no they climm' the
+mounting to get in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So when we had breathed us a little the circuiting was begun, Ephraim
+Yeates and Jennifer going toward the lower end of the sink, and the
+Catawba and I in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>Since we must examine closely every rift and crevice in the boundary
+cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great
+trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony.
+They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell
+you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if
+only he hath ease of his footgear.</p>
+
+<p>Taking it all in all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the
+sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to
+a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was
+level in our faces and the day was waning.</p>
+
+<p>Coming together again, we made haste to compare notes. There was little
+enough to add to the common fund of information, and the mystery of the
+lost trail remained a mystery. True, we, the Indian and I, had found a
+ravine at the extreme upper end of the valley through which, we thought,
+a sure-footed horse might be led at a pinch, up or down; but this ravine
+had not been used by the powder train, and apart from it there was no
+practicable horse path leading down from the plateau.</p>
+
+<p>As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might
+stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity the sunken valley
+was separated from the great gorge without only by a ridge which was no
+more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by
+the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet.</p>
+
+<p>Inasmuch as the most favorable point of espial upon the camp below was
+the cliff whence we had first looked down into the sink, we harked back
+thither, passing around the lower end of the valley and along the
+barrier ridge. Plan we had none as yet, for the preliminary to any
+attempt at a rescue must be some better knowledge of the way into and
+out of Falconnet's cunningly chosen stronghold. True, we might win in
+and out again by the ravine which the chief and I had explored at the
+upper end, and Dick was for trying this when the night should give us
+the curtain of darkness for a shield. But the old hunter would hold this
+forlorn hope in reserve as a last resort.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sort it out for yourself, Cap'n Dick,&quot; he argued. &quot;Whatsomedever we
+make out to do&mdash;four on us ag'inst that there whole enduring army o'
+their'n&mdash;has got to be done on the keen jump, with a toler'ble plain
+hoss-road for the skimper-scamper race when it <i>is</i> done. For, looking
+it up and down and side to side, we've got to have hosses&mdash;some o' their
+hosses, at that. I jing! if we could jest make out somehow 'r other to
+lay our claws on the beasteses aforehand&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had reached the cliff and were once more peering down at the enemy's
+camp. Though for the cliff-shadowed valley it was long past sunset and
+all the depths were blue and purple in the changing half-lights of the
+hour, the shadow veil was but a gauze of color, softening the details
+without obscuring them. So we could mark well the metes and bounds of
+the camp and prick in all the items.</p>
+
+<p>The camp field was the largest of the savannas or natural clearings. On
+the margin of the stream the Indian lodges were pitched in a semicircle
+to face the water. Farther back, Falconnet's troop was hutted in
+rough-and-ready shelters made of pine boughs&mdash;these disposed to stand
+between the camp of the Cherokees and the tepee-lodge of the captive
+women which stood among the trees in that edge of the forest hemming the
+slope which buttressed our cliff of observation.</p>
+
+<p>At first we sought in vain for the storing-place of the powder. It was
+the sharp eyes of the Catawba that finally descried it. A rude housing
+of pine boughs, like the huts of the troopers, had been built at the
+base of a great boulder on the opposite bank of the stream; and here was
+the lading of the powder train.</p>
+
+<p>From what could be seen 'twas clear that the camp was no mere bivouac
+for the day; indeed, the Englishmen were still working upon their
+pine-bough shelters, building themselves in as if for a stay indefinite.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a rest camp,&quot; quoth Dick; &quot;though why they should break the march
+here is more than I can guess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Ephraim Yeates. &quot;'Tain't jest rightly a rest camp, ez I take
+it. Ez I was a-saying last night, this here is Tuckasege country, and we
+ain't no furder than a day's running from the Cowee Towns. Now the
+Tuckaseges and the over-mounting Cherokees ain't always on the best o'
+tarms, and I was a wondering if the hoss-captain hadn't sot down here to
+wait whilst he could send a peace-offer' o' powder and lead on to the
+Cowee chiefs to sort o' smooth the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No send him yet; going to send,&quot; was Uncanoola's amendment. &quot;Look-see,
+Chelakee braves make haste for load horses down yonder now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again the sharp eyes of the Catawba had come in play. At the foot of the
+great boulder some half dozen of the Cherokees were busy with the powder
+cargo, lashing pack-loads of it upon two horses. One of the group, who
+appeared to be directing the labor of the others, stood apart, holding
+the bridle reins of three other horses caparisoned as for a journey.
+When the loading was accomplished to the satisfaction of the
+horse-holding chieftain, he and two others mounted, took the burdened
+animals in tow, and the small cavalcade filed off down the stream toward
+the apparent <i>cul de sac</i> at the lower end of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Ephraim Yeates was up in a twinkling, dragging us back from the cliff
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Up with ye!&quot; he cried. &quot;Now's our chance to kill two pa'tridges with
+one stone! If we can make out to get down into t'other valley in time to
+see how them varmints come out, we'll know the way in. More'n that, we
+can ambush 'em and so make sartain sure o' five o' the six hosses we're
+a-going to need, come night. But we've got to leg for it like Ahimaaz
+the son of Zadok!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus the old borderer; and being only too eager to come to handgrips
+with the enemy, we were up and running faster than ever Joab's
+messenger ran, long before the old man finished with his Scriptural
+simile.</p>
+
+<p>Not to take the risk of delay on any unexplored short cut, we made
+straight for the ravine of our ascent, found it as by unerring instinct,
+and were presently racing down to the Indian trace in the little upland
+valley above the gorge.</p>
+
+<p>For all the helter-skelter haste I found time to remember that the gorge
+as we had last seen it had been well besprinkled with armed Cherokees
+lying in wait for us. If they were still there we should be like to have
+a hot welcome; and some reminder of this I gasped out to Yeates in mid
+flight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ne'm mind that; if we run up ag'inst 'em anywhere, 'twon't be
+there-away. They've took the hint and quit; scattered out to hunt us
+long ago,&quot; was his answer, jerked out between bounds. And after that I
+loosed the Ferara in its sheath and saved my breath as I might for the
+killing business of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a sharp disappointment that, for all the haste of our mad scramble
+down the mountain, we were too late to surprise the secret of the
+enemy's stronghold. The Catawba was leading when we dashed down into the
+valley, and one glance sent him flying back to stop us short with a dumb
+show purporting that the quarry was already out of the defile and coming
+up the Indian path.</p>
+
+<p>Richard swore grievously, but the old backwoodsman took the checkmate
+placidly and began to set the pieces for the second game in which the
+horses were the stake, hiding his useless rifle in a hollow tree,&mdash;his
+powder had been soaked and spoiled in the early morning plunge for
+life,&mdash;and drawing his hunting-knife to feel its edge and point.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I allow, that fotches us to the hoss-lifting,&quot; he said, in his slow
+drawl. Then he laid his commands upon us. &quot;Ord'ly, and in sojer-fashion,
+now; no whooping and yelling. If the hoss-captain's got scouts out
+a-s'arching for us, one good screech from these here varmints we're
+a-going to put out'n their mis'ry 'u'd fix our flints for kingdom come.
+I ain't none afeard o' your nerve,&quot;&mdash;this to Richard and me&mdash;&quot;leastwise,
+not when it comes to fair and square sojer-fighting. But this here
+onfall has got to be like the smiting o' the 'Malekites&mdash;root <i>and</i>
+branch; and if ye're tempted to be anywise marciful, jest ricollect that
+for the sake o' them wimmen-folks <i>we've got to have these hosses</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>You are not to suppose that he was holding us inactive while he thus
+exhorted us. On the contrary, he was posting us skilfully beside the
+trace like the shrewd old Indian fighter that he was, with a rare and
+practised eye to the maximum of cover with the minimum of thicket tangle
+to impede the rush or to shorten the sword-swing.</p>
+
+<p>But when all was done we were at this disadvantage; that since the enemy
+was close at hand we dared not cross the path to give our trap a jaw on
+either side. To offset this, the Catawba dropped out of line and
+disappeared; and when the Cherokees were no more than a hundred yards
+away, Uncanoola came in sight a like distance in the opposite direction,
+running easily down the path to meet the up-coming riders.</p>
+
+<p>Richard let slip an admiration-oath under his breath. &quot;There's a fine
+bit of strategy for you!&quot; he whispered. &quot;That wily Jack-at-a-pinch of
+ours will befool them into believing that he is a runner from the Cowee
+Towns. 'Tis our cue to lie close; he will halt them just here, and there
+will be roving eyes in the heads of the two who have not to talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had not long to wait. Our cunning ally timed his halting of the
+emissaries to a nicety, and when the three Cherokees drew rein they were
+within easy blade's reach. The powwow, lengthened by Uncanoola till we
+were near bursting with impatience, was spun out wordily, and presently
+we saw the pointing of it. The Catawba was affecting to doubt the
+protests of the emissaries and would have them dismount and prove their
+good faith by smoking the peace-pipe with him.</p>
+
+<p>I give you fair warning, my dears, that you may turn the page here and
+skip what follows if you are fain to be tender-hearted on the score of
+these savage enemies of ours. It was in the very summer solstice of the
+year of violence; a time when he who took the sword was like to perish
+with the sword; and we thought of little save that Margery and her
+handmaiden were in deadliest peril, and that these Indians had five
+horses which we must have.</p>
+
+<p>And as for my own part in the fray, when I recognized in the
+five-feathered chieftain of the three that copper-hued imp of Satan who
+had been the merciless master of ceremonies at the torturing of my poor
+black Tomas, the decent meed of mercy which even a seasoned soldier may
+cherish died within me, and I made sure the steel would find its mark.</p>
+
+<p>So, when Uncanoola drew forth his tobacco pipe and made the three doomed
+ones sit with him in the path to smoke the peace-whiff all around, we
+picked out each his man and smote to slay. The scythe-like sweep of
+Jennifer's mighty claymore left the five-feathered chieftain the shorter
+by a head in the same pulse-beat that the Ferara scanted a second of the
+breath to yell with; though now I recall it, the gurgling death-cry of
+the poor wretch with the steel in his throat was more terrible to hear
+than any war-whoop. As for the old borderer, he was more deliberate.
+Being fair behind and within arm's reach of his man, he seized him by
+the scalp-lock, bent the head backward across his knee&mdash;but, faugh!
+these are the merest butcher details, and I would spare you&mdash;and myself,
+as well.</p>
+
+<p>While yet this most merciless deed was a-doing, the Catawba bounded to
+his feet and made sure of the horses which were rearing and snorting
+with affright. That done, he must needs gloat, Indian-wise, over his
+fallen adversary, turning the headless body with his foot and gibing at
+it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wah! Call hisself the Great Bear, hey? Heap lie; heap no bear; heap
+nothing, now. Papoose bear no let hisself be trap' that way. No smoke
+peace-pipe&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now Ephraim Yeates, standing ear a-cock and motionless, like some
+grim old statue done in leather, cut him short with a sudden, &quot;Hist,
+will ye!&quot; and a twinkling instant later we had other work to do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Onto the hosses with this here Injun-meat, ez quick ez the loving
+Lord'll let ye!&quot; was the sharp command. &quot;There's a whole clanjamfrey o'
+the varmints a-coming down the trace, and I reckon ez how we'd better
+scratch gravel immejitly, <i>if</i> not sooner!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXVI_THE_CHARRED_STICK_FOR_A_GUIDE"></a><h2>XXVI<br />WE TAKE THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Luckily for us the new danger was approaching from the westward. So, by
+dint of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees
+hoist upon the horses, and were able to efface in part the signs of the
+late encounter before the band of riders coming down the Indian path was
+upon us. But there was no time to make an orderly retreat. At most we
+could only withdraw a little way into the wood, halting when we were
+well in cover, and hastily stripping coats and waistcoats to muffle the
+heads of the horses.</p>
+
+<p>So you are to conceive us waiting with nerves upstrung, ready for fight
+or flight as the event should decide, stifling in such pent-up suspense
+as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle.
+Happily, the breath-scanting interval was short. From behind our thicket
+screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely
+footpace down the path. Ephraim Yeates quickly named these new-comers
+for us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis about ez I allowed&mdash;some o' the Tuckaseges a-scouting down to
+hold a powwow with the hoss-captain. Now, then; if them sharp-nosed
+ponies o' their'n don't happen to sniff the blood&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hope was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of
+two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons,
+keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the
+riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged
+the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little
+time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty
+forest was ours to keep or break as we chose.</p>
+
+<p>The old frontiersman was the first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, friends, I reckon ez how we mought ez well thank the good Lord
+for all His marcies afore we go any furder,&quot; he would say; and he doffed
+his cap and did it forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird could wish to look
+upon. The twilight shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering
+in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the
+valley. The hush of nature's mystic hour was abroad, and even the
+swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than
+a stone's cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low
+thunderings. There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and
+the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the
+lightest zephyr hung stark and motionless.</p>
+
+<p>Barring the old borderer, who had gone upon his knees, we stood as we
+were; the Catawba holding the pack horses, and Jennifer and I the three
+that bore the ghastly burdens of mortality. The bodies of the slain had
+been flung across the saddles to balance as they might; and to the
+pommel of that saddle which bore the trunk of the five-feathered
+chieftain, Uncanoola had knotted the grisly head by its scalp-lock to
+dangle and roll about with every restless movement of the horse&mdash;a
+hideous death-mask that seemed to mop and mow and stare fearsomely at us
+with its wide-open glassy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>With this background fit for the staging of a scene in Dante Alighieri's
+tragic comedy, the looming mountains, the upper air graying on to dusk,
+and the solemn forest aisles full of lurking shadows, you are to picture
+the old frontiersman, bareheaded and on his knees, pouring forth his
+soul in all the sonorous phrase of Holy Writ, now in thanksgiving, and
+now in most terrible beseechings that all the vials of Heaven's wrath
+might be poured out upon our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>His face, commonly a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now
+ablaze with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of
+supplication he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving,
+asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of
+those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be
+the herald of the wrath of God.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas close upon actual nightfall when the old man rose from his knees
+and, with the rising, put off the beadsman and put on the shrewd old
+Indian fighter. Followed some hurried counselings as to how we should
+proceed, and in these the hunter set the pace for us as his age and vast
+experience in woodcraft gave him leave.</p>
+
+<p>His plan had all the merit of simplicity. Now that we had the horses,
+Richard's notion of an approach from the head of the sunken valley
+became at once the most hopeful of any. So Ephraim Yeates proposed that
+we betake ourselves to the mountain top and to the head of that ravine
+which the Catawba and I had discovered. Here we should leave the horses
+well hidden and secured, make our way down the ravine, and, with the
+stream for a guide, follow the sunken valley to the camp at its lower
+end. Once on the ground without having given the alarm, we might hope to
+free the captives under cover of the darkness; and our retreat up the
+valley would be far less hazardous than any open flight by way of the
+unexplored road the powder train had used.</p>
+
+<p>So said the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this
+<i>in toto</i>. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout
+advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet,
+and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he
+proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's plan, leaving
+the fourth to take the hint given by the charred stick and the swimming
+ambush crew, and so penetrating to the valley by the stream cavern, be
+at hand to strike a blow for our dear lady's honor in case of need.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a thing to be done, and I am with you, Dick,&quot; said I. This before
+Ephraim Yeates could object. &quot;Should there be need for any, two blades
+will be better than one. If it come to blows and we are killed or taken,
+Yeates and the chief must make the shift to do without our help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As you would guess, the old hunter demurred to this halving of our
+slender force, but we over-persuaded him. If all went well, we were to
+rendezvous on the scene of action to carry out the plan of rescue. But
+if our adventure should prove disastrous, Yeates and Uncanoola were to
+bide their time, striking in when and how they might.</p>
+
+<p>Touching this contingency, I drew the old man aside for a word in
+private.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If aught befall us, Ephraim,&mdash;if we should be nabbed as we are like to
+be,&mdash;you are not to let any hope of helping us lessen by a feather's
+weight the rescue chance of the women. You'll promise me this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sartain sure; ye can rest easy on that, Cap'n John. But don't ye go for
+to let that rampaging boy of our'n upsot the fat in the fire with any o'
+his foolishness. He's love-sick, he is; and there ain't nothing in this
+world so ridic'lous foolish ez a love-sick boy&mdash;less'n 'tis a love-sick
+gal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised on my part and so we went our separate ways in the gathering
+darkness; though not until the lashings of the packs had been cut and
+the powder and lead, save such spoil of both as Ephraim Yeates and
+Uncanoola would reserve, had been spilled into the river. As for the
+bodies of the dead Indians, the old hunter said he would let them ride
+till he should come to some convenient chasm for a sepulcher; but I
+mistrusted that he and the Catawba would scalp and leave them once we
+were safely out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>At the parting we took the river's edge for it, Richard and I, keeping
+well under the bank and working our way cautiously down the gorge until
+we were stopped by the pouring cross-torrent of the underground
+tributary. Here we turned short to the left along the margin of the
+barrier stream, and tracing its course across the gorge came presently
+to the northern cliff at the lip of the spewing cavern mouth.</p>
+
+<p>By now the night was fully come and in the wooded defile we could place
+ourselves only by the sense of touch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you ready, Dick?&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As ready as a man with a shaking ague can be,&quot; he gritted out. &quot;This
+dog's work we have been doing of late has brought my old curse upon me
+and I am like to rattle my teeth loose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me go alone then. Another cold plunge may be the death of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said he, stubbornly. &quot;Wait but a minute and the fever will be on
+me; then I shall be fighting-fit for anything that comes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So we waited, and I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets.
+Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I
+had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a
+plunge into cold water would make him shrink.</p>
+
+<p>In a little time he felt for my hand and grasped it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm warm enough now, in all conscience,&quot; he said; and with that we
+slipped into the stream.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a disappointment of the grateful sort to find the water no more
+than mid-thigh deep. The current was swift and strong, but with the
+pebbly bottom to give good footing 'twas possible to stem it slowly.
+Laying hold of each other for the better breasting of the flood we felt
+our way warily to the middle of the pool; felt for the low-sprung cavern
+arch, and for that scanty lifting of it where we hoped to find head room
+between stone above and stream below.</p>
+
+<p>We found the highest part of the arch after some blind groping, and
+making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like
+progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.</p>
+
+<p>I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less,
+no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.
+All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed
+caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the
+room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as
+it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right
+glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me;
+glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of the rock dragon was
+vastly more terrifying than difficult. Once well within the closely
+drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a
+purchase for the foothold. Better still, when we had passed a
+pike's-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew
+wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to
+lock arms and push on side by side.</p>
+
+<p>From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and
+presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any
+peaceful woodland brook. Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the
+cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking
+straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from
+a narrow breadth of sky.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXVII_A_KINGS_TROOPER_BECAME_A_WASTREL"></a><h2>XXVII<br />HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts
+of the grateful outer air.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What new wonder is this?&quot; he would ask, with something akin to awe in
+his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the
+answer with our finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most
+simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the
+stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was
+quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In
+some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face
+had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep
+cleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm&mdash;that toward the
+upland valley&mdash;was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides;
+but the lower end was open.</p>
+
+<p>Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come,
+turning from the Indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier
+stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single
+file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so
+to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.</p>
+
+<p>How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well,
+had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had
+left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we
+might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we
+felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's
+edge in the gorge.</p>
+
+<p>That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into
+the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were
+presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This
+extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide
+and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing
+pebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks
+and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like
+to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side
+passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Softly!&quot; he cautioned; &quot;here are their vedettes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone
+to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew
+his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the
+great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the
+teeth-chattering suffered him:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What say you, Jack? Shall we rush them? There's naught else for it.&quot;
+And then, with a gritting oath: &quot;Oh, damn this cursed chilling!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath
+to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved
+our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the
+crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly
+starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of
+savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two
+sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the
+same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in
+which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless
+of possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the main
+corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped
+past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky
+trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so
+suddenly?&quot; I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak
+without coughing to betray ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless,&quot; was Richard's ready answer. &quot;By
+all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his
+peace-offering out yonder on the trace&mdash;which same they did not. So
+when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch
+hot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhounds
+win out in time to overtake them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye,&quot; said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to
+go about our business with the sentries.</p>
+
+<p>But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem
+that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. The
+watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the
+watchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue and
+cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the
+pit-black depths beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the
+rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a
+long Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow
+whence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in the
+sunken valley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now God be praised!&quot; quoth Richard most fervently. &quot;Another hour in
+this cursed kennel with the fever on me and I should be a yammering
+loose-wit.&quot; And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to
+be at large beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the
+stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the
+enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met no
+let or hindrance in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, the
+Indians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother's
+son of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire built
+before the pine-bough shelters.</p>
+
+<p>Favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-hand
+reconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. As I have
+said, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered the
+steep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed from
+the stream, and from the Indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at the
+water's edge. Here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of the
+Indian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humming
+like the buzzing of a bee-hive. The flap of the tepee-lodge was closely
+drawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap of
+white-ashed embers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are safe as yet, thank God!&quot; says Richard, heaving a most palpable
+sigh of relief. Then, with the fever in his veins to whip his natural
+ardor into hasty action: &quot;'Twill be hours before Eph and the Catawba can
+come in by your upper ravine, Jack, and we shall never have a better
+chance than this. Hold you quiet here, whilst I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But I laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardy
+marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?&quot; I would say. &quot;'Twill be risky
+enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that
+great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to
+work in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned upon me like a pettish child. &quot;Oh, to the devil with your
+stumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. By
+heaven! I'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in your veins!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you have said before. But let that pass, we must bide by our promise
+to Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in present
+peril. Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we
+have the firelight to help. When the time for action comes we must be
+able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be. Come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length
+and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp. We had it;
+had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his
+lieutenant and another. The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.
+The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and
+while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less to
+fear from him.</p>
+
+<p>I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of
+usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know Frank Falconnet better than you do, Jack, for I have known him
+later. He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate
+with the liquor in him. 'Tis lucky we are here. If he do but drink deep
+enough, Margery is like to have need&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hist!&quot; said I; &quot;some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as
+they look.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us
+out on the up-valley side of the encampment. Here we could look down
+into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of
+the band were cropping the lush grass. It was the sight of these, and of
+Margery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering
+venture to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but now
+dissuaded Richard Jennifer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall need another mount, and Mistress Margery's saddle,&quot; I said.
+&quot;Lie you close here whilst I play the horse-thief on these reavers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But my dear lad was rash only for himself. &quot;Now who is daft?&quot; he
+retorted. &quot;The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come
+through alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mayhap,&quot; I admitted. &quot;But yet&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an
+extinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire
+had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.</p>
+
+<p>I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man
+had walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me your sword!&quot; he muttered; &quot;mine will be too long to shorten
+upon,&quot; and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of
+hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by
+the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!&quot; he commanded; and so,
+pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a
+shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer
+shadows of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by
+the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings
+with the Ferara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, quick! what to do with him, Jack?&quot; he demanded, when I came up;
+and now my slower wit came into play.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out of this to some safer dressing-room, and I'll show you,&quot; said I;
+and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or
+more.</p>
+
+<p>When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his
+life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan I
+had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in
+train before this trooper should be missed.</p>
+
+<p>So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we
+stripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and
+became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that
+king whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,
+waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the
+boots we stuck fast, and I was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.</p>
+
+<p>The change made,&mdash;and you may believe no play-house actor of them all
+ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,&mdash;we bound our luckless captive
+hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him
+with only his boots for a memento,&mdash;happily for him the night was no
+more than goose-flesh cool,&mdash;we raced back to our peeping-place on the
+skirting of the camp ground.</p>
+
+<p>Here Dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable for
+letting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and with
+that I stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy's
+camp.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXVIII_I_SADDLE_THE_BLACK_MARE"></a><h2>XXVIII<br />IN WHICH I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Having so good a disguise, the thing I had set myself to do would seem
+to ask for little more than peaceful boldness held in check by common
+caution.</p>
+
+<p>The point where I had broken cover to step into the circle of fire light
+was nearly equidistant from the Englishmen's camp on the right and the
+horse meadow on the left, so I had not to pass within recognition range
+of the great fire; indeed, I might have skulked in the laurel cover all
+the way, thus coming to the horses unseen by any, but that I was afraid
+Falconnet might miss his trooper. So I thought it best to show myself
+discreetly.</p>
+
+<p>Copying our captive's lounging stride, I first held a sauntering course
+down to the stream's edge, keeping the great camp-fire and the droning
+Indian hive well to the right and far enough aloof to baffle any
+over-curious eye at either. Coming to the stream without mishap, I
+stopped and made a feint of drinking; after which I crossed and climbed
+slowly toward the makeshift powder magazine.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, the camp was pitched in a small savanna or natural
+clearing on the right bank of the little river. This clearing was
+hedged about by the forest on three sides, and backed by the densely
+wooded steeps and crags of the western cliff. I guessed the compass of
+it to be something more than an acre; not greatly more, since the fire
+at the troop camp lighted all its boundaries.</p>
+
+<p>On the left or opposite bank of the stream there was no intervale at
+all. The ground rose sharply from the water's edge in a rough hillside
+thickly studded and bestrewn with boulders great and small; fallen
+cleavings and hewings from the crags of the eastern cliff. 'Twas at the
+foot of one of the boulders, a huge overhanging mass of weather-riven
+rock facing the camp, that the powder cargo was sheltered; so isolated
+to be out of danger from the camp-fires.</p>
+
+<p>From the hillside just below this powder rock I could look back upon the
+camp <i>en enfilade</i>, as an artilleryman would say. Nearest at hand was
+the half-moon of Indian lodges with the hollow of the crescent facing
+the stream, and a caldron fire burning in the midst. Around the fire a
+ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling
+dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer
+ring of squatting figures&mdash;the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the
+savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in
+the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.</p>
+
+<p>On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was
+in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion
+came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho, Jack Warden!&quot; he called, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands to
+lift the hail above the chanting of the Indian dancers. &quot;Have a look at
+that shelter whilst you are over there and make sure 'twill shed rain if
+the weather shifts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now some such long-range marking down as this was what I had been
+angling for. So I came to attention and saluted in soldierly fashion,
+thereby raising a great laugh among my pseudo-comrades around the
+trooper fire&mdash;a laugh that pointed shrewdly to the baronet-captain's
+lack of proper discipline. But that is neither here nor there. Having my
+master's order for it, I climbed to the foot of the powder rock.</p>
+
+<p>Here the bare sight of all the stored-up devastation set me athirst with
+a fierce longing for leave to snap a pistol in the well-laid mine. For
+if these enemies of ours had planned their own undoing they could never
+have given a desperate foeman a better chance. To hold the pine boughs
+of the rude shelter in place they had piled a great loose wall of stones
+around and over the cargo; and the firing of the powder, heaped as it
+was against the backing cliff of the boulder, would hurl these weighting
+stones in a murderous broadside upon the camp across the stream.</p>
+
+<p>But since my dear lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside,
+I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as
+I thirsted to&mdash;could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap
+nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not
+have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only
+obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing
+spark out of two bits of stone.</p>
+
+<p>But being otherwise enjoined, as I say, I turned my back upon the
+temptation and held to the business in hand, which was to reach and
+recross the stream higher up and so to come among the horses.</p>
+
+<p>As I had hoped to find them, the saddles were hung upon the branches of
+the nearest trees, Margery's horse-furnishings among them. At first the
+black mare was shy of me, but a gentling word or two won her over, and
+she let me take her by the forelock and lead her deeper into the herd
+where I could saddle and bridle her in greater safety.</p>
+
+<p>My plan to cut her out was simple enough. Trusting to the darkness&mdash;the
+horse meadow was far enough from the fires to make a murky twilight of
+the ruddy glow&mdash;I thought to lead the mare quietly away up the stream
+and thus on to the foot of that ravine by which we hoped to climb to the
+old borderer's rendezvous on the plateau. But when all was ready and I
+sought to set this plan in action, an unforeseen obstacle barred the
+way. To keep the horses from straying up the valley an Indian sentry
+line was strung above the grazing meadow, and into this I blundered like
+any unlicked knave of a raw recruit.</p>
+
+<p>Had I been armed, the warrior who rose before me phantom-like in the
+laurel edging of the meadow would have had a most sharp-pointed answer
+to his challenge. As it was,&mdash;I had left my sword with Jennifer because
+the captured trooper whose understudy I was had left his sword in
+camp,&mdash;I tried to parley with the sentry. He knew no word of English,
+nor I of Cherokee; but that deadlock was speedily broken. A guttural
+call summoned others of the horse-keepers, and among them one who spoke
+a little English.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ugh! What for take white squaw horse?&quot; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the captain's order,&quot; I replied, lying boldly to fit the crisis.</p>
+
+<p>At that they gave me room; and had I hastened, I had doubtless gone at
+large without more ado. But at this very apex point of hazard I must
+needs play out the part of unalarm to the fool's <i>envoi</i>, taking time to
+part the mare's forelock under the head-stall, and looking leisurely to
+the lacings of the saddle-girth.</p>
+
+<p>This foolhardy delay cost me all, and more than all. I was still
+fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my
+Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of
+laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing
+laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me.
+Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white
+of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running
+swiftly for cover to the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an
+escaped Bedlamite as he fled. It asked for no second glance, this
+apparition of the yelling madman; 'twas our captive soldier, foot-loose
+and racing in to raise the hue and cry.</p>
+
+<p>Now you may always count upon this failing in a cautious man, that at a
+crisis he is like to do the unwisest thing that offers. This cutting out
+of Margery's mare was none so vital a matter that I should have risked
+the marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan upon it. Yet having done this very
+thing, I must needs make a bad matter infinitely worse.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of mounting to ride a charge through the camp, and so to draw
+the pursuit after me toward the cavern entrance, as I should, I slapped
+the mare to send her bounding through the guard line, snatched a saddle
+from its oak-branch peg to hurl it in the faces of the sentry group, and
+darting aside, plunged into the laurel thicket to come by running where
+I could and creeping where I must to that place where I had left Richard
+Jennifer.</p>
+
+<p>All hot and exasperated as I was, 'twas something less than cooling to
+find Dick a-double on the ground, holding his sides and laughing like a
+yokel at his first pantomime.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, ho, ho! did you&mdash;did you twig him, Jack?&quot; he gasped. &quot;Saw you ever
+such a mincing puss-in-boots since the Lord made you? Ah! ha! ha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The devil take your ill-timed humor!&quot; I cried. &quot;Up with you, man, and
+let us vanish while we may!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this the camp was in a pretty ferment, as you would guess&mdash;our late
+captive having had space enough to tell his tale. Drunk or sober,
+Falconnet was afoot and alert, shouting his orders to the Englishmen who
+were scrambling for their arms, and to the Indians who came swarming up
+from the lodges.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we looked, the Cherokees scattered like a company of trained
+gillies to beat us out of cover; and when the hunt was fairly up, the
+baronet-captain set his men in marching order to surround the wigwam of
+the captives.</p>
+
+<p>As yet there was time for a swift retreat up the valley, or at least for
+the choosing of some battle-field of our own where the enemy need not
+outnumber us twenty to one; and again I urged Richard to bestir himself.
+But it was the sight of Falconnet's troopers deploying to surround the
+tepee-lodge, and not any word of mine, that broke his merriment in the
+midst.</p>
+
+<p>At a bound he was up and handing me my sword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good by, Jack; go you whilst you can. You'll be like to meet Eph and
+the Catawba coming in; turn them back and tell them to bide their time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you?&quot; I would say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My place is inside of that soldier-cordon our friend is drawing about
+his dove-cote. I shall be at hand when she needs me, as I promised.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, so you may be; but not alone,&quot; said I; and with that we fell to
+running like a pair of doubling foxes through the wood on the steep
+slope behind the lodge, striving with might and main to gain the laurel
+thicket whence we had made our first reconnaissance before the
+converging lines of the redcoat cordon should close and shut us out.</p>
+
+<p>We did it by the skin of our teeth, diving to cover through the closing
+gap not a second too soon. When we were in and hugging the bare ground
+under the scanty leafing of the laurel, I take no shame in saying that I
+would have given a king's ransom to be at large again. Had there been
+but one of us the covert would have been cramped enough; and I was
+painfully conscious that my borrowed coat of scarlet was but a poor
+thing to hide in.</p>
+
+<p>To make it worse, Falconnet, who had lagged behind at the fire, was now
+heaping fresh fuel on, and this reviving of the blaze made the place as
+light as day. With the nearest links in the redcoat chain no more than a
+pike's-length at our backs, we dared not stir or breathe a word; and,
+all in all, we might have been taken like rats in a trap had any one of
+the sentries on our side of the circle chanced to look behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Having repaired the fire to his liking, the troop-captain came up to
+pass a word or two with his lieutenant. They spoke guardedly, but we
+could hear&mdash;could not help hearing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have seen nothing, Gordon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing, as yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Make the round again and tell the men 'twill be ten gold joes and a
+double allowance of liquor to the man who first claps eyes on any one of
+the four.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The subaltern went to carry out the order, and Falconnet fell to pacing
+back and forth before the little wigwam. I could see his face at the
+turn where the firelight fell upon him; 'twas the face of a villain at
+his worst, namely, a villain half in liquor. There was a lurking devil
+of passion peering out of the sensuous eyes; and ever and anon he
+stopped as if to listen for some sound within the captives' lodge.</p>
+
+<p>When the lieutenant returned to make his report, he was given another
+order to cap the first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your line is too close-drawn and too conspicuous,&quot; said the captain,
+shortly. &quot;Move the men out fifty paces in advance, and bid them take
+cover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will scarce be within hail of each other at that,&quot; says the
+lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Near enough, with ten gold pieces to sharpen their eyesight. Go you
+with them and hold them to their work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The line was presently extended as the order ran, each link in the
+cordon chain advancing fifty paces on its front into the forest. Dick
+fetched a deep sigh of relief; and I thought less of the thin-leafed
+cover and the scarlet coat of me.</p>
+
+<p>Falconnet had resumed the pacing of his sentry beat before the lodge,
+but when his men were out of sight and hearing he stopped short and
+stole on tiptoe to lay his ear to the flap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So, you are awake, Mistress Margery? Send your woman out. I would speak
+with you&mdash;alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply, but we could both hear the low anguished voice of
+our dear lady praying for help in this her hour of trial. Dick inched
+aside to give me room, freeing his weapon, as I did mine. We were not
+over-quiet about it, but the captain of horse was too hot upon his own
+devil's business to look behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Having no answer from within, he stooped to loose the flap. It was
+pegged down on the inside. He rose and whipped out his sword; the
+firelight fell upon his face again and we saw it as it had been the face
+of a foul fiend from the pit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Open!&quot; he commanded; and when there was neither reply nor obedience, he
+cut the flap free with his sword and flung it back.</p>
+
+<p>The two women within the wigwam were on their knees before a little
+crucifix hanging on the lodge wall. So much we saw as we broke cover and
+ran in upon the despoiler. Then the battle-madness came upon us and I,
+for one, saw naught but the tense-drawn face of a swordsman fighting for
+his life&mdash;a face in which the hot flush of evil passion had given place
+to the ashen graying of fear.</p>
+
+<p>We drove at him together, Dick and I, and so must needs fall afoul of
+each other clumsily, giving him time to spring back and so to miss the
+claymore stroke which else would have shorn him to the middle. Then
+ensued as pretty a bit of blade work as any master of the old
+cut-and-thrust school could wish to see; and through it all this king's
+captain of horse seemed to bear a charmed life.</p>
+
+<p>There was no punctilio of the code of honor in this duel <i>&agrave; outrance</i>.
+Knowing our time was short, we fought as men who fight with halters
+round their necks; not to decide a nice point at issue, but to kill this
+accursed villain as we would kill a mad dog or a venomous reptile whose
+living on imperiled the life and honor of the woman we loved.</p>
+
+<p>Thrice, whilst I held him in play, Dick rushed in to end it with a
+scythe-sweep of the broadsword; and thrice the Scottish death was turned
+aside by the flashing circle of steel wherewith the man striving
+shrewdly to gain time made shift to shield himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was not in flesh and blood to fend the double onslaught for more
+than some brief minute or two. Play as he would&mdash;and no
+<i>schl&auml;germeister</i>, of my old field-marshal's picked troop could best him
+at this game of parry and defense&mdash;he must give ground step by step;
+slowly at the pressing of the Ferara, and in quick backward leaps when
+the great broadsword bit at him.</p>
+
+<p>For the first few bouts he withstood us in grim silence. But now Richard
+cut in again and the claymore stroke, less skilfully turned aside,
+brought him to his knees. This broke his bull courage somewhat, and
+though he was afoot and on guard before my point could reach him, he
+began to bellow lustily for help.</p>
+
+<p>As you would suppose, the call was all unneeded. At the first clash of
+steel the outlying troopers were up and swarming to the rescue; and now
+on all sides came the trampling rush of the in-closing cordon line.</p>
+
+<p>Had Falconnet held his ground a moment longer he would have had us fast
+in the jaws of the trooper-trap; but 'tis the fatal flaw in mere brute
+courage that it will break at the pinch. No sooner did the volunteer
+captain catch a glimpse of his up-coming reinforcements than he must
+needs show us a clean pair of heels, running like a craven coward and
+shouting madly to his men to close with us and cut us down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After him!&quot; roared Dick, who was by now as rage-mad as any berserker;
+and with a cut and thrust to right and left for the nipping trap-jaws we
+were out and away in chase.</p>
+
+<p>Now you may mark this as you will; that whilst the devil hath need of
+his bond-servant he will come between with a miracle if need be to keep
+the villain breath of life in his vassal. Three bounds beyond the
+closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp
+field; and here the devil's miracle was wrought. Out of the forest
+fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it
+seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees&mdash;the detachment we had met in
+the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the
+pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Back to back, lad!&quot; I shouted; and 'twas thus we met their onslaught.</p>
+
+<p>In such a fray as that which followed 'tis the trivial things that leave
+their mark upon the memory. For one, I recall the curious thrill of
+master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer's great shoulder
+muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore. For
+another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my
+second&mdash;or mayhap 'twas the third&mdash;gushed out upon my sword hand, and I
+remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the
+pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and
+try in the death throe to withdraw it.</p>
+
+<p>But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free
+the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space
+they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so
+thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I
+was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXIX_HAVING_DANCED_WE_PAY_THE_PIPER"></a><h2>XXIX<br />IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more
+than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping
+recovery. But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open
+savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through
+the midst.</p>
+
+<p>To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart
+a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of
+the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry
+branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges
+of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other
+savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.</p>
+
+<p>So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was
+not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage
+fashion. But Richard Jennifer&mdash;what had become of him? A sound, half
+sigh, half groan, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I
+was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my
+poor lad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick!&quot; I cried.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a
+smile as loving-tender as a woman's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
+you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We were taken together?&quot; So much I dared ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the same onset. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that
+back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot,&quot; this with an inching
+nod toward a row of naked bodies propped sitting against a fallen tree;
+nine of them in all, one with its severed head between its knees, and
+three others showing the gaping hacks and hewings of the great
+broadsword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They've fetched them here to see us burn,&quot; he went on. &quot;But by the
+gods, we have the warrant of two good blades and Ephraim Yeates's
+hunting-knife that the only fires they'll ever see are those of hell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yeates?&quot; I queried. &quot;Then they have taken him and the Catawba, as
+well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not alive, you may be sure, else we should have them for company. But
+it has a black look for our friends that the flying column we met in the
+stream-cave came back so soon. Moreover, the bodies of the three
+peace-pipe smokers were found and brought in; that will be the Great
+Bear holding his head in his hands at the end of yonder bloody
+masquerade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guessed as much. God rest our poor comrades!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye; and God help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we
+have signed her death warrant with our bunglings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it were only death!&quot; I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis just that, Jack,&quot; said he; &quot;no better, mayhap, but no worse. When
+we were downed by that screeching mob, she was out and on her knees to
+Falconnet, beseeching him to spare us. He put her off smoothly at first,
+saying 'twas the Indians' affair&mdash;that they would not be balked of their
+vengeance by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more
+piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as
+swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour
+she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English
+gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she
+had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have
+spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said.
+'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble of
+redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the
+block.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will do it, think you?&quot; I queried, fearful lest she would, but more
+fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr blood in her
+on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And God
+nerve her to it, say I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said &quot;Amen&quot; to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as
+condemned men on the gallows the busy preparations for our taking off.</p>
+
+<p>Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me
+most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against
+the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures
+of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now,
+some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their
+bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.</p>
+
+<p>I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me
+fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista to
+where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly
+upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering
+the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me
+irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review
+again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the
+circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom
+Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.</p>
+
+<p>While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were
+strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle
+to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have
+put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the death song for the slain,&quot; said Richard; and while it lasted,
+this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping
+dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us
+spellbound.</p>
+
+<p>But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers. In its
+dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the
+dancers turned as one man to face us.</p>
+
+<p>I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a
+horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of
+blood bent upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone
+before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet,
+as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound
+us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst
+the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us
+freedom to shrink and dodge. Look straight before you and never flinch a
+hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust me,&quot; said I. &quot;We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to
+give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name
+us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.
+He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at
+me.</p>
+
+<p>That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the
+others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I
+would think, to split my skull. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh
+masterful enough to override the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to
+hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by
+a hair's-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bravo! well met!&quot; cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: &quot;Here
+comes mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull
+crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark&mdash;I could
+not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting laugh gave me
+leave to breathe again.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood
+out quickly one after another and for a little space the air was full of
+hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous skill
+of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the
+victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the
+thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales
+with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians
+of ours threw well and skilfully; 'tis a part of the only trade they
+know&mdash;the trade of war&mdash;to send a weapon true to the mark. None the
+less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the
+cloth of sleeve or body covering&mdash;and the flesh beneath it, as well.</p>
+
+<p>Dick had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running
+fire of taunts and gibing flings at the marksmen, I could hear the
+gritting oaths aside when they pinked him.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet,
+sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the
+helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs of
+death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll on fortitude than
+did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing erect. 'Tis no
+figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a
+kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the
+agony of it.</p>
+
+<p>Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the
+crueler refinements of these ante-burning torments; the flaying alive by
+inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the
+flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught of this;
+and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn
+us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the
+wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or
+four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage
+as these barbarians go, thrust a bit of paper into my hand, and gave me
+time to glance its message out by the light of the fire. 'Twas a line
+from Margery; and this is what she said:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Dear Heart:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>     Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your good
+     friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone, my lion-hearted
+     one. I am praying the good God to give you dying grace, and me
+     the courage to follow you quickly. Margery.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>     This by the hand of Tallachama.</i> </p></blockquote>
+
+<p>For one brief instant a wave of joy caught and flung me upon its highest
+crest, and all these savage tormentors could do to me became as naught.
+Then the true meaning of this her brave <i>Ave atque vale</i> smote me like a
+space-flung meteor, and the joy-wave became an ocean of despair to
+engulf me in its blackest depths. The letter was never meant for me;
+'twas for Richard Jennifer, who, as she would think, must know the
+story of her marriage to his friend and must believe her love went with
+the giving of her hand. And she named him Lion-Heart because he was
+brave, and true, and strong, like that first English Richard of the
+kingly line.</p>
+
+<p>I thrust the message back upon the bearer of it, begging him in dumb
+show to give it quickly to my companion. I knew not at the time if he
+did it, being so crushed and blinded by this fresh misery. But when the
+Indians drew off to ring us in a chanting circle for the final act, I
+would not let the lad see my face for fear he might fathom the
+heart-break in me and know the cause of it.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas at this crisis, when all was ready and one had run to fetch the
+fire, that I heard a smothered oath from Dick and saw the Indian who was
+coming up to fire the wood heaps drop his brand and tread upon it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ecod!&quot; said a voice, courtier-like and smoothly modulated. &quot;'Tis most
+devilish lucky I came, Captain Ireton. Another moment and they would
+have grilled you in the king's uniform&mdash;a rank treason, to say naught of
+poor Jack Warden left without a clout to cover him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It needed not the glance aside to name mine enemy. But I would not
+pleasure him with an answer. Neither would Richard Jennifer. He stood
+silent for a little space, smiling and nursing his chin in one hand, as
+his habit was. Then he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I came to bid you God-speed, gentlemen. You tumbled bravely into my
+little trap. I made no doubt you'd follow where the lady led, and so you
+did. But you'll turn back from this, I do assure you, if there be any
+virtue in an Indian barbecue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this Richard could hold in no longer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Curse you!&quot; he gritted. &quot;Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair
+to draw us out of hiding?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; said this arch-fiend, smiling again. &quot;Most unluckily for you,
+you both stood in my way,&mdash;you see I am speaking of it now as a thing
+past,&mdash;and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one
+stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have done!&quot; choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. &quot;Give
+place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked
+meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a
+marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that
+call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while
+ago.&quot; And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away,
+forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's
+uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.</p>
+
+<p>The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among
+the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the
+fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now,&quot; said I, hearing a groan from
+my poor Dick.</p>
+
+<p>His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but
+upon his malady, the tertian fever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!&quot; he gasped. &quot;If these
+cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and
+that will break my heart!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it
+looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the
+chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and
+thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me
+gasp and strangle at the finish.</p>
+
+<p>For a little time after the sucking in of that first
+smoke-breath&mdash;nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to
+die by fire&mdash;I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by
+anticipation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a
+sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely
+troubled.</p>
+
+<p>So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their
+weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and
+yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily
+to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and
+felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through
+the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as
+marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures
+stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas Dick's voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that
+broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in
+panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One word, Jack, before we go&mdash;go to our own place. He said&mdash;he said she
+would be free to&mdash;to marry him. Tell me ... O God in Heaven!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of
+flame, yet I must needs add to it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear
+me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you'll
+forgive&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and
+through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with
+green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon
+by smothering us out of hand.</p>
+
+<p>With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full
+to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I
+called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and
+his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful
+grimaces of the death throe.</p>
+
+<p>You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away
+for very pity's sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames,
+as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.</p>
+
+<p>There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The
+fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of
+flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that
+lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on
+shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the
+dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now
+above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames
+a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze
+swept through the tree-tops.</p>
+
+<p>So now I would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He
+gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to
+drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind;
+a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring
+flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the
+dulled senses once more keenly alert.</p>
+
+<p>With the wind came the rain, a passing summer-night's shower of great
+drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing
+in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous
+droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it,
+came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the
+savanna&mdash;this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain's whistle
+shrilling the assembly.</p>
+
+<p>While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel
+and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full
+cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of
+the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form
+burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand
+plucked me out of the scorching hell-pit.</p>
+
+<p>If I did aught to help it was all mechanical. I do remember dimly some
+fierce struggle to free my legs from the blazing tangle; this, and the
+swelling sob of joy at the sight of the faithful Catawba hacking at
+Dick's lashings and dragging him also free of the fire. And you may
+believe the welcome tears came to ease the pain of my seared eyes when
+my poor lad&mdash;I had thought him gone past human help&mdash;took two staggering
+steps and flung his arms about my neck.</p>
+
+<p>Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In
+a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind
+the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants
+so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them
+lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of
+us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow
+flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock
+like that of an earthquake.</p>
+
+<p>The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most
+awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great
+powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff
+itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba
+sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm
+for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.</p>
+
+<p>But Dick hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the
+crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed
+ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself
+down, crying as if his heart would break.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O God! she's lost, she's lost!&mdash;and I have missed the chance to die
+with her or for her!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXX_EPHRAIM_YEATES_PRAYED_FOR_HIS_ENEMIES"></a><h2>XXX<br />HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer's
+grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it,
+loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon Dick with pullings and
+haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very
+stiffening rigor of despair.</p>
+
+<p>So, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in
+midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling
+fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian
+there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard's
+afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be
+denied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on, you two, if you are set upon it,&quot; he said. &quot;I must go back.
+Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright.
+'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba grunted his disgust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. What think? White squaw
+<i>yonder</i>&mdash;no yonder,&quot; pointing first forward and then back in the
+direction of the stricken camp.</p>
+
+<p>Richard spun around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. &quot;Then she
+is alive and safe?&quot; he burst out. &quot;Speak, friend, whilst I leave the
+breath in you to do it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ugh!&quot; said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer's vehemence or
+by the dog-like shake. &quot;What for Captain Jennif' think papoose thinks
+'bout the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw <i>firs'</i>; <i>then</i>
+blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif' and Captain
+Long-knife if can. Heap do firs' thing <i>firs'</i>, and las' thing <i>las'</i>.
+Wah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to
+make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us
+forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor
+lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for Dick;
+and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.</p>
+
+<p>So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in
+arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets
+spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage.
+And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, Dick
+was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a
+dead weight between us.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that
+rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the
+fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle
+preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking
+it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful
+Catawba.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and
+were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and
+we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their
+wire-like needles under foot.</p>
+
+<p>By this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but
+it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a
+nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very
+ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; &quot;Well, now; the Lord be
+praised! if here ain't the whole enduring&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For
+now my poor Dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I
+were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick
+little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady
+darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!&quot; she sobbed; &quot;oh, cruel,
+cruel!&quot; Then she lashed out at us. &quot;Why don't you strike a light? How
+can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your pardon, Mistress Margery,&quot; I said; &quot;'tis only that the fever has
+overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the
+fire-scorching.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A light!&quot; she commanded; &quot;I must have a light and see for myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim
+found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel
+of a great king's musket&mdash;one of his reavings from the enemy&mdash;soon had a
+pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while
+she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples
+gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double
+rescue from the old hunter.</p>
+
+<p>Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me
+figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the
+Indian camp at our torture spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come
+within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless
+back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when
+every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they
+set to work.</p>
+
+<p>With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams
+of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream;
+the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern
+edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the
+light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.</p>
+
+<p>The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected
+whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the
+looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it
+asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of
+the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a
+shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late
+jailers to the shelter of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of
+temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the
+stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When
+he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran
+back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal
+from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.</p>
+
+<p>The outworking of the <i>coup de main</i> was a triumph for the old
+borderer's shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the
+Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by
+the firing and the shrilling of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly
+into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder
+train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of Dick and me.</p>
+
+<p>Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had
+his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for,
+after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in
+rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had
+these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been
+lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the
+grass in a little glade; and with this mount for Margery and her
+tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.</p>
+
+<p>All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and
+oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that
+whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking
+note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them
+down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'Twas
+altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden
+that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how I
+did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.</p>
+
+<p>It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back
+upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates
+the pressing question of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I take it, we may not linger here,&quot; I said. &quot;Have you marked out a
+line of retreat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old borderer was busied with his loot of the Indian camp&mdash;'twas not
+in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been
+for time. In the raffle of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and
+warrior finery, he came upon my good old blade and Richard's great
+claymore&mdash;trophies claimed by the head men of the Cherokees after our
+taking, as we made no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Found 'em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the Great Bear,&quot;
+said the hunter, and then with grim humor: &quot;'Lowed to keep 'em to
+ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up
+in a fiery chariot, like the good old Elijah.&quot; The weapons disposed of,
+he made answer to my query. &quot;Ez for making tracks immejitly, <i>if</i> not
+sooner, I allow there ain't no two notions about that. But I'm
+dad-daddled if I know which-a-way to put out, Cap'n John, and that's the
+gospil fact.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not strike for the Great Trace, and so go back the way the powder
+convoy came?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>It could be done, he said, but the hazard was great. 'Twas out of all
+reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to
+carry the news of the earthquake massacre. That news once cried abroad
+in the near-by Cowee Towns, the entire Tuckasege nation would turn out
+to run us down. Moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only
+practicable horse-path leading eastward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I'm telling you right now, Cap'n John, we made one more blunder in
+this here onfall of our'n, owin' to our having ne'er a seventh son of a
+seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead. Where we flashed in
+the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and Cap'n
+Dick got in. Ever' last one of 'em able to crawl is a-making straight
+for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do
+'em like the Gileadites did the men o' Ephraim at the passages o' the
+Jordan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fresh as I was from the torture fire, I could not forbear a shudder at
+this old man's savagery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Kill them in cold blood?&quot; I would say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anan?&quot; he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and I let the
+matter rest. He was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>But when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to
+the eastward flitting by way of the Great Trace. To the west and south
+there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white
+settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the Watauga. I
+asked if we might hope to reach this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e'enabout the
+mountainousest patch o' land that ever laid out o' doors,&quot; was the
+hunter's reply. &quot;And there ain't ne'er a deer-track, ez I knows on, to
+p'int the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the
+Tuckaseges,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I reckon, that's about the long and short of it. And I do
+everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride
+skimper-scamper again, when she's been fair living a-horseback for a
+fortnight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will not fail you,&quot; I ventured to say, adding: &quot;But Jennifer is in
+poor fettle for making speed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he'll ride,&quot; quoth the old
+hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. &quot;Reckon we can get him
+on a hoss right now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I went to see. Margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light I
+could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your patient, Mistress Margery,&mdash;We must mount and ride at once. Is he
+fit?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But we must be far to the eastward before daybreak.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can not help it. If you make him ride to-night you will finish what
+those cruel savages began, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have little choice&mdash;none, I should say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you are bitter hard!&quot; she cried, though wherein my offending lay
+just then I was wholly at a loss to know.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis your privilege to say so,&quot; I rejoined. &quot;But as for making Dick
+ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. We are only a little way
+from the nearest Indian towns, and if the daylight find us here&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Spare me,&quot; she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked
+Ephraim Yeates to put her in her saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my
+urging and let us set him upon his beast. Once safe in the saddle, we
+lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back
+to hold him erect. This last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas
+most ingenious. The forked limb, in shape like a Y, was set astride the
+cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to Dick's legs and to the
+girths. Thus the upright stem of the inverted Y became an easy back-rest
+for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was
+little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.</p>
+
+<p>When all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain
+top; and now even the old borderer and the Indian confessed their
+inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they
+knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight,
+and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.</p>
+
+<p>This route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we
+must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy
+camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the
+vengeance-cry. But here again there was no alternative, and we set us in
+order for the descent, with Yeates and the Catawba ahead, the women and
+Dick in the midst, and her Apostolic Majesty's late captain of hussars,
+masquerading as a British trooper, to bring on the rear.</p>
+
+<p>Once in motion beneath the blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly
+lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a
+short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head
+of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a
+thickset grove of the pines, and Ephraim Yeates appeared at my stirrup
+to say:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;H'ist ye off your nag, Cap'n John, and let's take a far'well squinch at
+the inimy whilst we can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where? what enemy?&quot; I would ask, slipping from the saddle at his word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, the hoss-captain's varmints, to be sure; or what-all the
+abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. We ain't more than a cat's
+jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on 'em this
+morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw not what was to be gained by any such long-range espial in the
+darkness. None the less, I followed the old man to the cliff's edge. He
+was wiser in his forecastings than I was in mine. There was a thing to
+look at, and light enough to see it by. One of the missile stones, it
+seems, had crashed into the great fire, scattering the brands in all
+directions. The pine-bough troop shelters were ablaze, and creeping
+serpents of fire were worming their way hither and yon over the year-old
+leaf beds in the wood. Ever and anon some pine sapling in the path of
+these fiery serpents would go up in a torch-like flare; and so, as I
+say, there was light enough.</p>
+
+<p>What we looked down upon was not inaptly pictured out by Ephraim
+Yeates's Scripture phrase, the abomination of desolation. Every vestige
+of the camp save the glowing skeletons of the troop shelters had
+disappeared, and the swarded savanna was become a blackened chaos-blot
+on the fair woodland scene. I have said that the powder-sheltering
+boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had
+toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a
+wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast
+upon the camp.</p>
+
+<p>At first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space. But a moment
+later, when three or four of the sapling torches blazed up together, we
+made out some half dozen figures of human beings&mdash;whether red or white
+we could not tell&mdash;stumbling and reeling about among the rocks like
+blind men drunken.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of these the old hunter doffed his cap and fell upon his knees
+with hands uplifted to pour out his zealot's soul in the awful sentences
+of the Psalmist's imprecation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Let God arise, and let His inimies be scattered; let them also that
+hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou
+drive them away; and like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the
+ungodly perish at the presence of God....'&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXI_WE_MAKE_A_FORCED_MARCH"></a><h2>XXXI<br />IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into
+the Great Trace near the ambush ground where we had set our trap for the
+peace men.</p>
+
+<p>The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were
+burning like points of white fire in the black dome of the heavens. As
+often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in
+fullest tide; and a whip-will's-widow, disturbed by our approach,
+fluttered to a higher perch and set up his plaintive protest.</p>
+
+<p>At our turning eastward on the trace, the old hunter massed our little
+company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to
+follow cautiously, tossed his bridle rein to the Catawba and went on
+ahead to feel out the way.</p>
+
+<p>This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the
+first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred
+we were together and measurably alone.</p>
+
+<p>Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding
+bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But,
+womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?&quot; she said, bitterly; and
+then: &quot;How you must despise me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I
+begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing
+the outlet of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my
+tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the
+command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back
+smartly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I
+speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise
+you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!&quot; I protested. &quot;'Tis my
+misfortune to be ever blundering.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of
+heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again
+throughout the passage perilous.</p>
+
+<p>By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting
+any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old
+borderer awaiting us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I allow, we've smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole
+bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,&quot; he said, mixing metaphor,
+Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont. Then he put a leg
+over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: &quot;From now on, old Jehu, the
+son o' Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind,
+Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your
+sword-p'int.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the
+valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed
+after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses
+pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace
+was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur,
+pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in
+the blind race.</p>
+
+<p>I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long
+night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The
+over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and
+the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road.
+Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to
+thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its
+fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky
+ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the
+opener forest of the hill country.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of
+a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was
+toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba
+or the Broad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the Broad itself,&quot; said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking;
+&quot;and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one
+the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch
+Broad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it do, so it do&mdash;in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for
+Sunday, by spells.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege
+country, as I take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I
+reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little
+gal?&quot; this last to Margery.</p>
+
+<p>Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her
+grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for
+me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be
+till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to
+give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o' sleep immejitly, <i>if</i> not
+sooner, now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and
+when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the
+horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came
+to help me ease Dick down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no
+more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever
+delirium had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb
+contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did we come out of it, Jack?&quot; he asked, when we had let him feel
+the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself.
+You're the heaviest loser.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who
+would not come anigh whilst I was with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the
+richest gainer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you dream?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He beckoned me to bend lower over him. &quot;I dreamed I was sore hurt, and
+that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas no dream,&quot; I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a
+bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for
+the breakfast cakes.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all
+that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we
+ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and
+nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log
+cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest.
+Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the
+journey paused.</p>
+
+<p>We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with
+stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood.
+Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting
+about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the
+settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,&mdash;of its own accord,
+or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,&mdash;and at the end of
+the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the
+forked stick to hold him in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than
+that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's
+rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day
+will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather
+to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind,
+or of the Catawba's.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the
+wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the
+pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled
+the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from
+slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.</p>
+
+<p>But when the strain was off and Dick was up and fit again, the misery
+of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting
+sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her
+loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble of his love for her
+in his feverish vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a
+thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow
+of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her
+word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud
+for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for
+aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard
+Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all
+the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he
+was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward
+faring.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me
+sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave it
+out in solitude, cursing the day that I was born, and that other more
+misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impassable between these
+two.</p>
+
+<p>What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great
+war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an
+honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you
+choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now
+gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was beyond
+forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach
+Queensborough by evening, that my deliverance came. I say deliverance
+because at the moment it had the look of a short shrift and a ready
+halter.</p>
+
+<p>We had crossed our own Catawba and were putting our horses at the steep
+bank on the outcoming side, when my saddle slipped. Dismounting to
+tighten the girth, I called to the others to press on, saying I should
+overtake them shortly.</p>
+
+<p>The promise was never kept. I scarce had my head under the saddle flap
+before a couple of stout knaves in homespun, appearing from I know not
+where, had me fast gripped by the arms, whilst a third made sure of the
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A despatch rider,&quot; said the bigger of the two who pinioned me. &quot;Search
+him, Martin, lad, whilst I hold him; then we'll pay him out for
+Tarleton's hanging of poor Sandy M'Guire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I held my peace and let them search, taking the threat for a bit of
+soldier bullyragging meant to keep me quiet. But when they had turned
+the pockets of my borrowed coat inside out and ripped the lining and
+made it otherwise as much the worse for their mishandling as it was for
+wear, the third man fetched a rope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you mean that, friend?&mdash;about the hanging?&quot; I asked, wondering if
+this should be my loophole of escape from the life grown hateful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure enough,&quot; said the big man, coolly. &quot;You'd best be saying your
+prayers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;Were you wearing my coat and I yours, you might hang me and
+welcome; in truth, you may as it is. Which tree will you have me at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man stared at me as at one demented. Then he burst out in a guffaw.
+&quot;Damme, if you bean't a cool plucked one! I've a mind to take you to the
+colonel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't do it, my friend. Though I am something loath to be snuffed out
+by the men of my own side, we need not haggle over the niceties. Point
+out your tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, by God! you're too willing. What's at the back of all this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing, save a decent reluctance to spoil your sport. Have at it, man,
+and let's be done with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if you beg me on your knees. You'll go to the colonel, I say, and
+he may hang you if he sees fit. You must be a most damnable villain to
+want to die by the first rope you lay eyes on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is as it may be. Who is your colonel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, rather, who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave my name and circumstance and was loosed of the hand-grip, though
+the third man dropped the cord and stepped back to hold me covered with
+his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An Ireton, you say? Not little Jock, surely!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, big Jock; big enough to lay you on your back, though you do have a
+hand as thick as a ham.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He ignored the challenge and stuck to his text. &quot;I never thought to see
+the son of old Mad-bull Roger wearing a red coat,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is nothing. Many as good a Whig as I am has been forced to wear a
+red coat ere this, or go barebacked. But why don't you knot the halter?
+In common justice you should either hang me or feed me. 'Tis hard upon
+noon, and I breakfasted early.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fall in!&quot; said the big man; and so I was marched quickly aside from the
+road and into the denser thicketing of the wood. Here my captors
+blindfolded me, and after spinning me around to make me lose the compass
+points, hurried me away to their encampment which was inland from the
+stream, though not far, for I could still hear the distance-minished
+splashing of the water.</p>
+
+<p>When the kerchief was pulled from my eyes I was standing in the midst of
+a mounted riflemen's halt-camp, face to face with a young officer
+wearing the uniform of the colonelcy in the North Carolina home troops.
+He was a handsome young fellow, with curling hair and trim side-whiskers
+to frame a face fine-lined and eager&mdash;the face of a gentleman well-born
+and well-bred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ireton?&quot; he said; by which I guessed that one of my capturers
+had run on ahead to make report.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are the son of Mr. Justice Roger Ireton, of Appleby Hundred?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have that honor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gave me his hand most cordially.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are very welcome, Captain; Davie is my name. I trust we may come to
+know each other better. You are in disguise, as I take it; do you bring
+news of the army?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the contrary, I am thirsting for news,&quot; I rejoined. &quot;I and three
+others have but now returned from pursuing a British and Indian powder
+convoy into the mountains to the westward. We have been out five weeks
+and more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me curiously. &quot;You and three others?&quot; he queried. &quot;Come
+apart and tell me about it whilst Pompey is broiling the venison. I
+scent a whole Iliad in that word of yours, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One thing first, if you please, Colonel Davie,&quot; I begged. &quot;My
+companions are faring forward on the road to Queensborough. They know
+naught of my detention. Will you send a man to overtake them with a note
+from me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel indulged me in the most gentlemanly manner; and when my note
+to Jennifer was despatched we sat together at the roots of a great oak
+and I told him all that had befallen our little rescue party. He heard
+me through patiently, and when the tale was ended was good enough to say
+that I had earned a commission for my part in the affair. I laughed and
+promptly shifted that burden to Ephraim Yeates's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The old hunter was our general, Colonel Davie. He did all of the
+planning and the greater part of the executing. But for him and the
+friendly Catawba, it would have gone hard with Jennifer and me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I fear you are over-modest, Captain,&quot; was all the reply I got; and then
+my kindly host fell amuse. When he spoke again 'twas to give me a r&eacute;sum&eacute;
+in brief of the military operations North and South.</p>
+
+<p>At the North, as his news ran, affairs remained as they had been, save
+that now the French king had sent an army to supplement the fleet, and
+Count Rochambeau and the allies were encamped on Rhode Island ready to
+take the field.</p>
+
+<p>In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that
+August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little
+changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first
+to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving
+to reassemble his scattered forces.</p>
+
+<p>A few military partizans, like my host, had kept the field, doing what
+the few might against the many to retard my Lord Cornwallis's northward
+march; and a week earlier the colonel with his handful of mounted
+riflemen had dared to oppose his entry into Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas no more than a hint to his Lordship that we were not afraid of
+him,&quot; said my doughty colonel. &quot;You know the town, I take it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, we had harassed him all the way from Blair's Mill, and 'twas
+midnight when we reached Charlotte. There we determined to make a stand
+and give him a taste of our mettle. We dismounted, took post behind the
+stone wall of the court house green and under cover of the fences along
+the road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good! an ambush,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hardly that, since they were looking to have resistance. Tarleton was
+sick, and Major Hanger commanded the British van. He charged, and we
+peppered them smartly. They tried it again, and this time their infantry
+outflanked us. We abandoned the court house and formed again in the
+eastern edge of the town; and now, bless you! 'twas my Lord Charles
+himself who had to ride forward and flout at his men for their want of
+enterprise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you could never hope to hold on against such odds!&quot; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no; but we held them for a third charge, and beat them back, too.
+Then they brought up two more regiments and we mounted and got off in
+tolerably good order, losing only six men killed. But Colonel Francis
+Locke was one of these; and my brave Joe Graham was all but cut to
+pieces&mdash;a sore blow to us just now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel sighed and a silence fell upon us. 'Twas I who broke it to
+say: &quot;Then we are still playing a losing hand in the South, as I take
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis worse than that. As the game stands we have played all our trumps
+and have not so much as a long suit left. Cornwallis will go on as he
+pleases and overrun the state, and the militia will never stand to front
+him again under Horatio Gates. Worse still, Ferguson is off to the
+westward, embodying the Tories by the hundred, and we shall have
+burnings and hangings and harryings to the king's taste.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I nursed my knee a moment and then said: &quot;What may one man do to help,
+Colonel Davie?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly. &quot;Much, if you are that man, and you do not value
+your life too highly, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may leave that out of the question,&quot; said I. &quot;I shall count it the
+happiest moment of my life when I shall have done something worth their
+killing me for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again he gave me that curious look I had noted before. Then he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you were as young as Major Joe Graham, and had been well crossed in
+love, I could understand you better, Captain. But, jesting aside, there
+is a thing to do, and you are the man to do it. Our spies are thick in
+Cornwallis's camp, but what is needed is some master spirit who can plot
+as well as spy for us. Major Ferguson moves as Cornwallis pulls the
+strings. Could we know the major's instructions and designs, we might
+cut him off, bring the Tory uprising to the ground, and so hearten the
+country beyond measure. I say we might cut him off, though I know not
+where the men would come from to do it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said I, when he paused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The preliminary is some better information than our spies can give us.
+Now you have been an officer in the British service, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled. &quot;Truly; and I have the honor, if you please to call it so, of
+his Lordship's acquaintance. Also, I have that of Colonel Tarleton and
+the members of his staff, the same having tried and condemned me as a
+spy at Appleby Hundred some few weeks before this chase I have told you
+of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His face fell. &quot;Then, of course, it is out of the question for you to
+show yourself in Cornwallis's headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the contrary, Colonel Davie, I am more than ever at your service.
+Let me have a cut of your venison and a feed for my horse, and I shall
+be at my Lord's headquarters as soon as the nag can carry me there.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXII_I_AM_BEDDED_IN_A_GARRET"></a><h2>XXXII<br />IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Tis a very pretty hazard, Captain Ireton. But can it be brought off
+successfully, think you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I have said, it hangs somewhat upon the safety of my portmanteau. If
+that has come through unseized to Mr. Pettigrew at Charlotte, and I can
+lay hands on it, 'twill be half the battle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you left it behind you at New Berne?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; Mr. Carey was to forward it as he could.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Davie had given me bite and sup, and I was ready to take the
+road. My plan, such as it was, had been determined upon, and to the
+furthering of it, the colonel had written me a letter to a friend in the
+town who might shelter me for a night and make the needed inquiry for my
+belongings. Also, he had given me another letter, of which more anon,
+and had pressed upon me a small purse of gold pieces&mdash;a treasure rare
+enough in patriot hands in that impoverished time.</p>
+
+<p>When all was done, two of my late captors were ordered to set me
+straight in the road; and some half-hour past noon I had shaken hands
+with the big fellow in homespun who had been so bent upon hanging me
+without benefit of clergy, had crossed the river, and was making the
+first looping in a detour which should bring me into Charlotte from the
+westward.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas drawing on toward evening, and I had recrossed the river a mile or
+more below Appleby Hundred, when I began to meet the outposts of the
+British army. I was promptly halted by the first of these; but my
+borrowed uniform and a ready word or two passed me within the lines as a
+courier riding post to headquarters from Major Ferguson in the west.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant in command of the first vedette line was not
+over-curious. He asked me a few questions about the major's plans and
+dispositions,&mdash;questions which, thanks to Colonel Davie's information, I
+was able to answer glibly enough, swallowed my tale whole, and was so
+obliging as to give me the password for the night to help me through the
+inner sentry lines.</p>
+
+<p>Thus fortified, I rode on boldly, and having the countersign the
+difficulties vanished. When I was come to town it was well past
+candle-lighting; and the patrol was out in force. But by dint of using
+the password freely I made my way unhindered to the house of the
+gentleman to whom Colonel Davie's letter accredited me.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, the difficulties began. Though the camp of the army lay
+just without the town to the southward, the officers were quartered in
+every house, and that of Colonel Davie's friend was full to
+overflowing. What was to be done we knew not, but at the last moment my
+friend's friend thought of an expedient and wrote a note for me whilst I
+waited, half in hiding, in the outer hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a desperate chance, but these are desperate times,&quot; said my
+would-be helper. &quot;I am sending you to the town house of one of our
+plantation seigneurs&mdash;a man who is fish, flesh or fowl, as his interest
+demands. I hear he came in to-day to take protection, and there is a
+chance that he will shelter you for the sake of your red coat and a gold
+piece or two. But I warn you, you must be what you appear to be&mdash;a
+soldier of the king&mdash;and not what this note of Colonel Davie's says you
+are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seeing a wide field of danger-chances in this haphazarding, I would have
+asked more about this trimming gentleman to whom I was to be handed on;
+but at that moment there came a thundering at the door, and my anxious
+host was fain to hustle me out through the kitchen as he could, catching
+up a black boy on the way to be my guide.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God speed you,&quot; he said at parting. &quot;Make your footing good for the
+night, if you can, and we'll see what can be done to-morrow. I'll send
+your portmanteau around in the morning, if so be Mr. Pettigrew has it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With that I was out in the night again, turning and doubling after my
+guide, who seemed to be greatly afeard lest I should come nigh enough to
+cast an evil eye upon him.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas but a little distance we had to go, and I had no word out of my
+black rascal till we reached the door-stone of a familiar mansion but
+one remove from the corner of the court house green. Here, with a
+stuttering &quot;D-d-dis de house, Massa,&quot; he fled and left me to enter as I
+could.</p>
+
+<p>Since the street was busily astir with redcoat officers and men coming
+and going, and any squad of these might be the questioners to doubt my
+threadbare courier tale, I lost no time in running up the steps and
+hammering a peal with the heavy knocker. Through the side-lights I could
+see that the wide entrance hall was for the moment unoccupied; but at
+the knocker-lifting I had a flitting glimpse of some one&mdash;a little man
+all in sober black&mdash;coming down the stair. There was no immediate answer
+to my peal, but when I would have knocked again the door was swung back
+and I stepped quickly within to find myself face to face with&mdash;Margery.</p>
+
+<p>I know not which of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I
+do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me
+a low-dipped curtsy and gave me my greeting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I bid you good evening, Captain Ireton,&quot; she said, coldly; and then
+with still more of the frost of unwelcome in her voice: &quot;To what may we
+be indebted for this honor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, chilling as these words were, they thrilled me to my finger-tips,
+for they were the first she had spoken to me since the night of my
+offending in the black gorge of the far-off western mountains. None the
+less, they were blankly unanswerable, and had the door been open I
+should doubtless have vanished as I had come. Of all the houses in the
+town this was surely the last I should have run to for refuge had I
+known the name of its master; and it was some upflashing of this thought
+that helped me find my tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never guessed this was your father's house,&quot; I stammered, bowing low
+to match her curtsy. &quot;I beg you will pardon me, and let me go as I
+came.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laid a hand on the door-knob. &quot;Is&mdash;is there any one here whom you
+would see?&quot; she asked; and now her eyes did not meet mine, and I would
+think the chill had melted a little.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I was begging a night's lodging of a friend whose house is full. He
+sent me here with a note to&mdash;ah&mdash;to your father, as I suppose, though in
+his haste he did not mention the name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand. &quot;Give me the letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said I; &quot;that would be but thankless work. Knowing me, your
+father must needs conceive it his duty to denounce me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give it me!&quot; she insisted; this with an impatient little stamp of the
+foot and an upglance of the compelling eyes that would have constrained
+me to do a far foolisher thing, had she asked it.</p>
+
+<p>So I gave her the letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read
+it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved
+nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon
+her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom
+rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in
+her fair white neck. And with the seeing I became a fool of love again
+in very earnest, and was within a hair's breadth of sinking honor and
+all else in an outpouring of such words as a man may say once to one
+woman in all the world&mdash;and having said them may never unsay them.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a most practical little thing she did that saved me from falling
+headlong into this last ditch of dishonor. Twisting the letter into a
+spill she stood on tiptoe to light it at one of the candles, saying:
+&quot;'Twas a foolish thing to put on paper, and might well hang the writer
+in such times as these. He says you are a king's man and well known to
+him, and you are neither.&quot; But when the letter was a crisp of blackened
+paper-ash she turned upon me, and once again the changeful eyes were
+cold and her words were stranger-formal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it you would have me do, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing,&quot; I made haste to say; &quot;nothing save to believe that I came
+here unwittingly&mdash;and to let me go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where will you go? The town is alive with those who would&mdash;who would&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who would show me scant mercy, you would say. True; and yet I came
+hither&mdash;to the town, I mean&mdash;of my own free will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her mood changed in the pivoting fraction of an instant, and now the
+beautiful eyes were alight and warm and pleadingly eloquent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, why did you come? Are you&mdash;are you what they said you were?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A spy? If I am, you would scarce expect me to confess it, even to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis dishonorable&mdash;most dishonorable!&quot; she cried. &quot;I could respect a
+brave soldier enemy; but a spy&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a clattering of hoofs in the street and a jingle of
+sword-scabbards on the door-stone. I wheeled to face the newcomers,
+determined now to front it boldly as a desperate man at bay. But before
+the fumbling hands without could find the door-knob Margery was beside
+me, all a-flutter in a trembling-fit of excitement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Up the stair, quickly, <i>pour l'amour de Dieu!</i>&quot; she whispered; and we
+were at the clock landing when the great door opened and some half-dozen
+king's officers came in. We crouched together behind the balustrade till
+they should pass beyond the sight of us, and in the group I marked a man
+stout and heavy built, walking full solidly for his two-and-forty years.
+He wore his own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for
+the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the
+candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed,
+long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and
+marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I
+had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on
+his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the
+field&mdash;Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses in the town to
+choose among, I had blundered into this&mdash;my Lord's own headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>I had but a passing glimpse of the incoming group, for when it was well
+beneath the turn of the stair, my lady had me up and running again,
+driving me on before her to the chamber floor above, along a dimly
+lighted corridor with many turnings, and so to a <i>cul-de-sac</i> in the
+same&mdash;a doorless passage with a high dormer window in the end and no
+other apparent means of egress.</p>
+
+<p>Margery had snatched a candle from one of the corridor holders in the
+flight, and now she bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did
+it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to
+have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had
+turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the door lay a raftered garret half filled with cast-off house
+lumber and lighted and aired by two high roof windows. Into this she led
+me, with a finger on her lip for silence. A hum of voices, the clinking
+of glass, and now and again a hearty soldier laugh told me that my
+garret was above some living-room of the house.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood, boots in hand, she found a makeshift candlestick and in
+a trice had spread me a pallet on an ancient oaken settle big enough to
+serve for a choir stall in a cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be safe here for the night, if so be you will make no more noise
+than a rat might make,&quot; she whispered. &quot;<i>Mais, mon Dieu!</i> 'tis a
+terrible risk. How you will get off in the morning I do not know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave that to me,&quot; I rejoined. Then I remembered the portmanteau and
+the promise that it should be sent hither. Here was a further
+complication, and I must needs beg a boon of her. &quot;A black boy will
+bring my portmanteau in the morning. I have a decent desire to be hanged
+in clean clothing; may I beg you to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She made a quick little gesture of impatience; at the further
+complication, or at my boldness in asking, I knew not which. But her
+whispered reply was of assent, and then she turned to leave me.</p>
+
+<p>At that a sudden fierce desire to know why she had thus befriended me
+came to throttle prudence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One more word before you go, Mistress Margery. Will you tell me why you
+have done this for the man who can serve you only by thrusting his neck
+into the hangman's noose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a little space, and I knew not what emotion it was
+that moved her to turn away and cover her face with her hands. But when
+she spoke her voice was low and tremulous with pent-up anger, as I
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly, Captain Ireton, you have done a thing to make me hate you&mdash;and
+myself, as well. But I may not forget my duty, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And with this cruel word she was gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXIII_I_HEAR_CHANCEFUL_TIDINGS"></a><h2>XXXIII<br />IN WHICH I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>You are not to suppose that the hazards of this hiding place in my Lord
+Cornwallis's headquarters would keep me from sleeping well and soundly.
+One of the things a soldier learns soonest is to take his rest when and
+as he can; and after peering curiously into the nooks and corners of my
+garret to make sure I was alone, I flung myself a-sprawl on the broad
+settle and was dropping off into forgetfulness when I heard a tapping at
+the wainscot.</p>
+
+<p>It fetched me wide awake with a start, and I was up and weaponed
+instantly&mdash;having taken the precaution to lay my sword in easy reach
+before blowing out the candle. Groping my way cautiously to the secret
+door, I crouched and listened. All was silent save for the intermittent
+clamor of the wassailers in the room beneath. After waiting a full
+minute I opened the door and looked without. The high dormer window in
+the end of the corridor made the darkness something less than visible,
+and I could see that the passage was empty. But on the floor at my feet
+was my supper; a roasted fowl on a server, hot from the spit, with
+maize bread and garnishings fit for an epicure.</p>
+
+<p>Since, as an appanage of Appleby Hundred, this was mine own house, and,
+by consequence, the fowl was mine, I ate as a hungry man should, making
+no scruple on the score of pride. Nor did I forget to be grateful to my
+lady; though when I remembered that this was doubtless but another leaf
+out of her duty-book, the meat was like to choke me. And it was this
+thought that made me resolve thrice over to loose her from the onerous
+burden of me so soon as ever the morning light should come to help me
+find the way out of my covert prison.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, for all my fine resolves to be astir and off by daybreak,
+the sun was shining broadly in at my garret window when I awoke.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing the sun, I tumbled out of my settle-bed, with a malediction on
+the sloth that had bound me so fast, and made for the door. But some one
+had been before me, entering whilst I slept. On a broken chair were a
+basin and ewer, with soap and towels; beside the chair was my
+portmanteau; and on a deal box, neatly covered with a linen cloth, was
+my breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>You, my dears, who have your maid or man to tell you when your bath is
+ready, and to lay out the fresh, clean garments sweet from the
+laundering, may wonder that I put away the thought of flight and let the
+breakfast cool whilst I shaved and washed and scrubbed, and doffed the
+vagabond and donned the gentleman. I did it; did it leisurely, rolling
+the privilege as a sweet morsel under my tongue. They say the raiment
+never makes the man; 'tis a half-truth only. For in his own regard, at
+least, the man is vagabond or gentleman as he may dress the one part or
+the other. And I am sure of this; that when I drew up another of the
+cast-off chairs to sit at meat, freshly groomed, and clad in the field
+uniform of a captain of her Apostolic Majesty's Hussars, I was the
+fitter by many transmigrations to cope with fate or any other adversary.</p>
+
+<p>And now, the claims of decency paid in full, and the keen edge of hunger
+somewhat dulled, I was free to think of my sweet lady's loving-kindness
+to one she hated&mdash;and to wonder what she would do and be for one she
+loved. As you would guess, there were dregs of bitterness in that cup;
+and I was once again set sharp upon relieving her of the burden of me.</p>
+
+<p>Having my Austrian uniform, I was now ready to move in that venture
+outlined in part to Colonel Davie; but to set my plan in action I must
+first get free of the house unseen by my Lord or any of his suite. How
+to do this unaided I could not determine; and, since any fresh
+blundering would surely breed new trouble for Margery, I was forced to
+wait for her return.</p>
+
+<p>I made sure she would come, if only to be the sooner quit of me; and so
+she did, tapping at the wainscot door whilst I was dallying with the
+breakfast leavings. 'Twas worth something to see her start of surprise
+when I opened to her; but she was far too true a lady to be one thing
+to the unwashed vagabond and another to the gentleman-clad.</p>
+
+<p>I gave her good morning, and was beginning in some formal fashion to
+thank her for her thoughtful care, when she cut me short.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis my bounden duty, sir,&quot; she said, twanging once again upon that
+frayed string. &quot;You are my guest and my&mdash;husband; though God knows I
+would you were neither.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Merci, Madame</i>,&quot; said I; stung so sharply that the retort would out in
+spite of everything. &quot;As once before, I am your poor misfortunate
+pensioner; but this time you are not less willing to give than I am to
+receive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gave me a look that I could not fathom, and for a flitting instant I
+could have sworn there was a mocking smile a-lurk at the back of the
+beautiful eyes. Then she went straight to the subject-matter of her
+errand, brushing aside the small passage at arms as if it had not been.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are in a most perilous situation, Captain Ireton; do you know it?
+News of your presence in Charlotte has got abroad, and at this very
+moment Tarleton's dragoons are making a house-to-house search for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So; some one has betrayed me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know who it was?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded again.</p>
+
+<p>I considered of it for a little time, and then said: &quot;I must not be
+taken here. Will your&mdash;ah&mdash;<i>duty</i> stretch the length of showing me an
+unwatched door?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are no doors unwatched. You must stay here till nightfall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, that I will not. Will you tell me who it was set them on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas a man you hate&mdash;and who hates you heartily in return. He saw you
+come here last night; he knows you are here now&mdash;or guesses it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had no right to pry into her confidence as a thief would break into a
+house. But I was loath to fight my battle in the dark if she, or any
+one, could give me light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His name, if you may give it, Mistress Margery. It may point the way
+out of this coil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Owen Pengarvin. He was here last night when you came.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I remembered the little man in black whom I had seen coming down the
+stair whilst I knocked at the door. But this left me in a greater maze
+than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he knows I am here, why does he let them search elsewhere?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this she looked away from me, and I made sure I saw the sweet chin
+quiver when she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has reasons of his own; reasons of&mdash;of&mdash;&quot; but instead of telling me
+what they were she broke off to say: &quot;But now you know why all the doors
+of this house are under guard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; said I; and therewith I fell to pacing up and down the narrow
+clear-way in the garret, striving to see how I might come off with
+nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me.
+Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing,
+the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion
+was nipped in the bud. I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made
+to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation
+whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.</p>
+
+<p>When that leaven began to work in me I was fit for the daringest thing
+that offered; so I paused to ask if my Lord Cornwallis were yet in the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is writing letters in his bed-room,&quot; was her answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you will show me the way thither I shall be your poor debtor by that
+much more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not&mdash;unless you first tell me what you mean to do.&quot; She said it
+firmly, but now I was fronting death and could be as firm as she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you will not show me the way, I shall find it for myself.&quot; So much I
+said; but as for telling her that I meant to save his Lordship and all
+the others the trouble of running me down, I could not do that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are going to give yourself up,&quot; she said; and when I would not deny
+it, she darted before me and set her back against the wainscot door.
+&quot;'Tis folly, folly!&quot; she cried. &quot;He would but pull the bell-cord and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And give the order that Colonel Tarleton's sentence be executed upon
+me, you would say. Be it so. But in that event I can at least clear you
+and your father of any complicity in my hiding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say you shall not go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What touch of savagery is it in a man that will not suffer him to let a
+woman, loved or unloved, stand in the last resort against his will? At
+any other time I would have pleaded with her; would have ended, mayhap,
+by weakly deferring to her wish. But now&mdash;well, you must remember, my
+dears, that I was the trapped rat. I took her gently in my arms, set her
+aside, and stepped out into the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>I looked for nothing less than a volcano-burst of righteous indignation
+to pay me out for this piece of tyranny. But now, as twice or thrice
+before, my lady showed me how little a man may know of a woman's moods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not be so masterful rough with me,&quot; she said, with a pouting
+of the sweet lips that set me back upon that thought of a wayward child
+wanting to be kissed. &quot;If you say I must, I am in duty bound to show you
+the way.&quot; And so she led on and I followed, in a deeper maze than any
+she had ever set me in.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at a pair of doors in the main passage, she showed me the one
+that opened to my Lord's bed-chamber and ran away; ran with her hands to
+her face as if to shut out a sight which would not bear looking upon.</p>
+
+<p>I turned my back stiffly upon this newer wonder, pulled myself together
+and rapped on the door. A voice within bade me enter; the door opened
+under my hand and I stood in the presence of the man who, as I made no
+doubt, would shortly summon his guards and have me out to my rope and
+tree.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXIV_I_MET_A_GREAT_LORD_AS_MAN_TO_MAN"></a><h2>XXXIV<br />HOW I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>The room in which I found myself was the guest-chamber, furnished
+luxuriously, for that day and place, in French-fashioned mahogany and
+gilt. The bed was high and richly canopied, as befitted a peer's resting
+place; there was a square of Turkish drugget on the floor, a cheerful
+fire burning in the chimney arch, and on the small table whereat the
+occupant of the guest-room had lately breakfasted, a goodly display of
+the Ireton silver.</p>
+
+<p>My Lord was busy at his writing-desk when I entered; but when he looked
+up I saw the light of instant recognition in his eye. Never, I think,
+did another prisoner at the bar strive harder to read his sentence in
+his judge's eyes than I did in that moment of suspense. I liked not much
+the look he gave me; but his greeting was affable and kindly enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Captain Ireton; 'tis you, is it? We are well met, at last. They
+told me you were gone to join the rebels, did they not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was an opening for a bold man, and in a flash I came to the
+right-about, choked down the defiance I had meant to hurl at him, and
+took quick counsel of cool audacity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, my Lord, I know not what they have told you. In times past, the
+king had no truer soldier than I; and when I came across seas 'twas not
+to fight against him. But that I have not joined the rebels is no fault
+of certain of your Lordship's officers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say you so? But how is this? Surely I am not mistaken. I could be
+certain Colonel Tarleton reported your taking as a spy, and his trying
+of you. And was there not something about a rescue at the last moment by
+a band of these border bravos? But stay; let us have the colonel's story
+at first hands. Have the goodness to ring the bell for me, will you,
+Captain?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The crisis was come. A pull at the bell-cord would summon the guard, and
+the guard would be sent after Colonel Tarleton. Well, said the demon
+Despair, 'tis time you were gone to make room for Richard Jennifer; and
+I laid a hand upon the tasseled rope. But when I would have rung, all
+the man-pride, of race and of soldier training, rose up to bid me fight
+for space to strike one good blow in freedom's cause by way of
+leave-taking.</p>
+
+<p>So, as it had been an afterthought, I said: &quot;A word further with you
+first, my Lord, and then, if you please, I will call the guard. All you
+remember is true, save as to the principal fact. So far from being a spy
+in intent, or even a partizan of either side, I was at the time but
+newly come into the province, knowing little of the cause of quarrel and
+caring still less. But Captain Falconnet and Colonel Tarleton did their
+earnest best to make a rebel of me out of hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah? But the proof of all this, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The best I can offer is the present fact of my coming to place myself
+at your Lordship's disposal, being moved thereto by your Lordship's own
+desire expressed in an order sent some weeks since to Sir Francis
+Falconnet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&mdash;then you knew of that order?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Falconnet showed it to me after I was condemned and the firing
+squad was drawn up to snuff me out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My Lord Charles gave me the courtier smile that so endeared him to his
+soldiers,&mdash;he was well-loved of his men,&mdash;and bade me sit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The plot thickens, as Mr. Richardson would say. Let me have your story,
+Captain Ireton. I would rejoice to know why Captain Sir Francis
+Falconnet saw fit to disobey his orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was clear of the lee shore and the breakers at last, but I was fain to
+believe that not Machiavelli himself could hope to weather the storm in
+the open. How much or how little did Lord Cornwallis remember of Colonel
+Tarleton's report? How explicit had that report been?&mdash;was there any
+mention in it of my eavesdropping at the conference between Captain John
+Stuart and the baronet; of my attempt to warn the over-mountain men
+against the Indian-arming? Could I hope to tell his Lordship a tale so
+near the truth as to be unassailable by Tarleton and his officers, by
+Gilbert Stair and the spiteful little pettifogger, and yet so deftly
+garbled as to keep my neck out of the halter for the time being?</p>
+
+<p>All these questions thronged upon me as a mob to pull cool reason from
+her seat, and I could only play the part of the trapped rat and snap
+back at them. Yet my Lord Cornwallis was waiting for his answer, and a
+single moment's hesitation might breed suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>You must forgive me, my dears, if I confess it beyond me to set down
+here in measured words the tale I told his Lordship. A lie is a lie, be
+it told in never so good a cause; a thing deplorable and not to be
+glozed over or boasted of after the fact. So I beg you to let these
+quibblings to which I was driven rest in oblivion, figuring to
+yourselves that I used all the truth I dared, and that I strove through
+it all not wholly to sink the gentleman and the man of honor in the spy.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas but a bridge of glass when all was said; a bridge that carried me
+safely over for the moment into my Lord's confidence, yet one which a
+pebble flung by any one of a dozen hands might shiver in the dropping of
+an eyelid.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly, you have had a most romantic experience,&quot; said his Lordship,
+when I had made an end. Then he lay back in his chair and laughed till
+the stout body of him shook again. &quot;And all about a little wench of the
+provincials. Well, well; Sir Francis was always a sad dog with the
+women. But all this was in the early summer, you say; where have you
+been since?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was a chance for more romancing, this time of a sort less
+dangerous. So I drew breath and plunged again, telling how I had been
+carried off by my captor-rescuers; how I had fallen into the hands of
+the Indians&mdash;not all of whom, I would remind his Lordship, were friendly
+to the king; and lastly how I had but lately escaped from the mountain
+fastnesses back of Major Ferguson's camp at Gilbert Town. At this point
+my Lord interrupted the tale-telling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you know of the major and his doings? I would you had brought me
+late news of him. 'Tis a week since his last courier reached us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was the moment for the playing of my trump card&mdash;the only one I
+held. I rose, bowed, took from my pocket that other letter given me by
+Colonel Davie and handed it to his Lordship. 'Twas Major Ferguson's last
+report, intercepted by one of Davie's vigilant scouting parties.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; said my Lord; and I strolled to the window whilst he read the
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>When I turned to front him again he was all affability; and I knew I was
+safe&mdash;for the time, at least.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The major commends you highly as a good man and a true, Captain
+Ireton,&quot; he said, and truly the letter did contain a warm-hearted
+commendation of &quot;the bearer,&quot; whose name, for safety's sake, was
+omitted; and not only this, but the writer desired to have his man back
+again. Then my Lord added: &quot;You are here to take your old service again,
+I assume?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated. There be things that even a spy may balk at; and the taking
+of the oath of allegiance to the other side I conceived to be one of
+them. So I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have worn many uniforms since I doffed that of King George, my Lord,
+and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed cheerily. &quot;'But me no buts,' Captain Ireton; once an
+Englishman, always an Englishman, you know. I shall assign you to duty
+in my own family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I made a bold stroke. &quot;Let it be then as an officer of her
+Apostolic Majesty's service, and your Lordship's guest for the time.
+Believe me, it is thus I may best serve your&mdash;ah&mdash;the cause.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As how?&quot; he would ask.</p>
+
+<p>I smiled and touched the braided jacket of my hussar uniform.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As an Austrian officer on a tour of observation in the campaign I may
+go and come where others may not, and see and hear things which your
+Lordship may wish to know. Does your Lordship take me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and rose and clapped me on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may call the guard now, Captain, and I will turn you over&mdash;not to a
+firing squad, but to the tender mercies of our old rascal host who is a
+'trimmer' of the devil's own school. If he tries to screw a penny's pay
+out of you, as he is like to, put him in arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is your Lordship's meaning that I should be quartered here?&mdash;in this
+house?&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why not? Ah, my good Captain of Hussars, I have made you my
+honorary aide-de-camp and a member of my family so that I may keep an
+eye on you. <i>Comprenez-vous?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said it with a laugh and another hearty hand-clap on my shoulder, and
+I would fain take it for a jest. Yet there be playful gibes that hint at
+gibbets; and I may confess to you here, my dears, that I left my Lord's
+presence with the conviction that my acquittal was but a reprieve
+conditioned upon the best of future good behavior. So it took another
+turn of the audacity screw to tune me up for the battle royal with
+Gilbert Stair and the pettifogger, Owen Pengarvin.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXV_I_FIGHT_THE_DEVIL_WITH_FIRE"></a><h2>XXXV<br />IN WHICH I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>With the house guard for a guide I found my host in a box-like den below
+stairs; a room with a writing-table, two chairs and a great iron
+strong-box for its scanty furnishings.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was sitting at the table when I looked in, his long nose
+buried in a musty parchment deed. The light from the single small window
+was none too good, but it sufficed to help him recognize me at a glance,
+despite the hussar uniform. In a twinkling he put the breadth of the
+oaken table between us, hurled the parchment deed into the open
+strong-box, slammed to the cover and gave a shrill alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! you devils without, there! Here he is&mdash;I have him! Help! Murder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The guard, a burly, bearded Darmst&auml;dter, turned on his heel and stood at
+attention in the doorway, looking stolidly for his orders, not to the
+shrilling master of the house, but to the man who wore a uniform.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis naught,&quot; I said, speaking in German. &quot;He mistakes me for a
+<i>rittmeister</i> of the rebels. <i>Verstehen Sie?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The soldier saluted, wheeled and vanished; and I sat down to wait till
+the old man's outcry should pause for lack of breath. When my chance
+came, I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Calm yourself, Mr. Stair. You are in no present danger greater than
+that which you may bring upon yourself. Blot out all the past, if you
+please, and consider me now as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family seeking quarters in your house by my Lord's express command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quarters in my house?&mdash;ye're a damned rebel spy!&quot; he cried. &quot;I'll
+denounce ye to my Lord for what ye are. Ho! ye rascals, I say!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Peace!&quot; I commanded, sternly; &quot;this is but child's folly. No man in the
+British army would arrest me at your behest. Ring the bell and summon
+your factor lawyer. I would have a word or two in private with both of
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great
+beads on his wrinkled forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D' ye&mdash;d' ye mean to kill us both?&quot; he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if I can help it. But some better understanding is needful, and we
+will have it here and now, once for all. Will you ring, or shall I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him. A grinning
+black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond
+giving the order, I gave it myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly. Tell him Mr. Stair
+wants him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came. Being
+but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have
+fled when he saw me. But I caught him by the collar and sent him
+scurrying around the table to keep his master company.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at
+Appleby Hundred some weeks since?&quot; I demanded. &quot;Speak out, and quickly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap
+blindly in despair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you,&quot; he gritted
+out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On your information?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On mine and Mr. Stair's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye lie!&quot; shrieked the miser. &quot;I tell't ye to keep hands off, ye
+bletherin' little deevil, ye!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind,&quot; said I; &quot;what's done is done. But it must be undone, and
+that swiftly and thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the
+others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to
+contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some
+story that will hold water and lose no time about it. Do you
+understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seeing he was not to be put to the wall and spitted on the spot, the
+lawyer recovered himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis not the criminal at the bar who dictates terms, Captain Ireton,&quot;
+he said, with his hateful smirk. &quot;You are under sentence of death, and
+that by a court lawful enough in war time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You refuse?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speaking for myself, I shall leave no stone unturned to bring you to
+book, Captain,&mdash;when it suits my purpose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was loath to go to extremities with either of them; but my bridge of
+glass must be defended at all hazards.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You would best reconsider, Mr. Pengarvin. At this present moment I am
+of my Lord Cornwallis's military family and I have his confidence. A
+word from me will put you both in arrest as persons whose loyalty in
+times past has been somewhat more than blown upon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bah!&quot; said the pettifogger. &quot;Bluster is a good dog, but Holdfast is the
+better. You can prove nothing, as you well know. Moreover, with your own
+neck in a noose you dare not mess and meddle with other men's affairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dare not, you say? I'll tell you what I may dare, Master Attorney. If
+you are not disposed to meet me half way in this matter, I shall go to
+my Lord, tell him how I have been cheated out of my estate, declare the
+marriage with Mistress Margery, and see that you get your just deserts.
+And you may rest assured that this soldier-earl will right me, come what
+may.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a bold stroke, the boldest of any I had made that morning; but I
+was wholly unprepared for its effect upon the lawyer. His rage was like
+that of some venomous little animal, a thing to make an onlooker shudder
+and draw back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never!&quot; he hissed; &quot;never, I say! I'll kill her first&mdash;I'll&mdash;&quot; He
+choked in the very exuberance of his malignance, and his face was like
+the face of a man in a fit.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas then that I saw the pointing of his villainy and knew what Margery
+had meant when she said that for reasons of his own he was holding my
+betrayal in abeyance. He was Falconnet's successor and my rival. This
+little reptile aspired to be the master of my father's acres and the
+husband of my dear lady! And his holding off from denouncing me at once
+was also explained. Taking it for granted that the wife would bargain
+for the husband's life, he had made a whip of his leniency to flog
+Margery into subjection.</p>
+
+<p>My determination was taken upon the instant. There was no safety for
+Margery whilst this plotting pettifogger was at large, and I stepped to
+the door and called the sentry. The Darmst&auml;dter came back and I pointed
+to the lawyer. Then, indeed, the furious little madman found his tongue
+and shrilled out his defiance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Curse you!&quot; he yelled. &quot;I'll be quits with you for this, Master Spy!
+'Tis your hearing now, but mine will come, and you shall hang like a
+dog! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth&mdash;I'll&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made a sign and the soldier brought his musket into play and pricked
+his prisoner with the bayonet in token that time pressed. So we were rid
+of the lawyer in bodily presence, though I could hear his snarlings and
+spittings as the big Darmst&auml;dter ran him out at the bayonet's point.</p>
+
+<p>During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood
+apart, watchful but trembling. When we were alone I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your
+house, as a member of my Lord's family. Lead on, if you please, and I'll
+follow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad
+stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and
+catching at the balustrade to steady himself as we ascended. The room he
+gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and
+pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or
+a look behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in
+suddenly when I set my shoulder to it. There was a quick little cry,
+half of anger, half of affright, from within. I drew back hastily, with
+a muttered curse upon the old man's spite, and in the act my spur caught
+the door and slammed it shut behind me.</p>
+
+<p>For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had
+shown me to my lady's chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off,
+before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXVI_I_RODE_POST_ON_THE_KINGS_BUSINESS"></a><h2>XXXVI<br />HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my
+lady's flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood
+fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.
+Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like
+air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, &quot;Fie, for shame, Captain
+Ireton!&mdash;and you would call yourself a gentleman!&quot; to set me afire with
+prinklings of abashment.</p>
+
+<p>What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to
+let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own
+father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I
+should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run
+away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again,
+and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of
+passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the
+best of us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How are you better than the man you warned me of?&quot; she cried. And
+then, in a tempest of grief: &quot;Oh! you would not leave me the respect I
+bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it
+under foot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this
+unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for
+me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty,
+heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me
+spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded
+wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better
+right to look upon her thus?</p>
+
+<p>So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin
+veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid
+the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which
+lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked
+himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to
+look about him for his mate.</p>
+
+<p>Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may
+stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I
+would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to
+me.... Ah, God! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be
+ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I
+would do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!&quot; she pleaded. &quot;Think
+what it will mean to you, and how you will loathe me and yourself as
+well when this madness is overpast! Oh, go; go quickly, lest I, too,
+forget&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so it was that I found sudden strength to turn and leave her
+kneeling there; turned to grope blindly for the door with all the pains
+of hell aflame within me.</p>
+
+<p>For now I had put honor under foot; now I knew that I had truly earned
+her scorn and loathing. I could no longer plead that I was the puppet of
+fate flung against my will between this maiden and my dear lad. I was
+the wilful offender; false to my love, false to my friend, a recreant to
+every oath wherewith I had bound myself to be true and loyal to these
+two.</p>
+
+<p>With such a flaming sword to drive me forth, I stumbled from the room,
+thinking only how I should quickest rid me of myself. Hastening to my
+garret sleeping-place I buckled on my sword, found my shako, and went
+straight to my Lord's bed-chamber. My rap at the door went unanswered,
+and a broad-shouldered young fellow in a lieutenant's uniform, lounging
+on a settle in the clock landing of the stair, told me Lord Cornwallis
+was gone out.</p>
+
+<p>I was face to face with this young lieutenant before I recognized him;
+being so bent upon haste I should have passed him on the landing without
+a second glance had he not risen to grip me by the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the Lord Harry!&quot; he cried, &quot;is it thus you pass an old friend
+without a word, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas my good death-watch; that Lieutenant Tybee of the light-horse who
+had sunk the British officer in the man in that trying night at Appleby
+Hundred. I returned his hearty greeting as well as I might, and would
+have explained my present state and standing but that I was loath to lie
+to him. But as to this, he saved me the shame of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could have sworn you were no rebel, Captain Ireton; indeed, I made
+bold to say as much to our colonel, after it was all over. I told him a
+soft word or two would have won you back to your old service. You see I
+knew better than the others what lay beneath all your madnesses that
+night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You knew somewhat, but not all,&quot; I said; and thereupon, lest he should
+involve me deeper and detain me longer when I was athirst to be gone, I
+hastened to ask where I might hope to find his Lordship and Colonel
+Tarleton.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the hour for parade; you will find them at the camp,&quot; he replied.
+And then, out of the honest English heart of him: &quot;Have you made your
+peace, Captain? Do you need a friend to go with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little
+while before; that by my Lord's appointment I was now a sort of honorary
+aide-de-camp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good!&quot; said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince
+for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact. Then he
+roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below: &quot;A mount
+for Captain Ireton&mdash;and be swift about it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the
+talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty
+God-speed. Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor
+return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of
+nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest
+quench the fires of it.</p>
+
+<p>The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little
+changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the
+near-at-hand camp of an armed host. Being but a halt-point <i>en route</i> in
+the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of
+that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.</p>
+
+<p>I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary's quarters and
+making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at
+the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy's use of them.
+Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the
+lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait
+my opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the
+soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in
+many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled
+to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's
+famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the
+infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October
+sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves
+of steel at the command to halt and port arms.</p>
+
+<p>What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this
+well-trained host, armed&mdash;as we were not&mdash;with the deadly bayonet, and
+moving as one man at the word of command? Not the bravest home guard or
+militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on
+the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.</p>
+
+<p>Riding presently around the field to be the nearer to the general when
+my time should come, I missed the mark completely. It so chanced that as
+the parade was ended my Lord and his suite were at the extreme right;
+and when the regiments broke ranks I was forced to skirt the entire camp
+to come into the road. By this time those I sought were gone into the
+town, so I must needs turn about and follow, with the thing I had to say
+still unspoken.</p>
+
+<p>I need not drag you back and forth with me on the search I made to find
+Lord Cornwallis again. 'Tis enough to say that after missing him here
+and there, I ran him to earth at the court house, where, it was told
+me, my Lord was sitting in council with his staff officers.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking it worse than useless to try to force my way into the council
+chamber, I waited in the raff of soldiery without, cursing the delay
+which gave my despairing resolution time to cool. When I had closed the
+door of my dear lady's chamber behind me I was resolved to fling myself
+upon that fate which needed but a word from me to make my calling and
+election to a gibbet swift and sure. Had I found my Lord Cornwallis in
+his bed-room the word would have been spoken; but now the iron of
+resolution cooled in spite of me.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas not that I was less willing to pay the price of expiation; that
+must be done in any case. But I had seen the enemy, and all the soldier
+in me rebelled at the thought of dying like a noosed bullock in the
+shambles. Could I but strike that one good blow.</p>
+
+<p>The old court house of our greater Mecklenburg was such as some of you
+may remember; a stout wooden building raised upon brick pillars to leave
+a story underneath. In the time of the British occupation this lower
+story served as a market house, and the public entrance to the court
+room above was reached by steps on the outside. In my boyhood days this
+outer stair was the only one; but now in wandering aimlessly through the
+market-place beneath I found another flight in a corner; the &quot;jury
+stair,&quot; they called it, since it provided the means of egress from the
+jury box above.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of this inner stair set me plotting. Could I make use of it to
+come unseen into the council chamber of Lord Cornwallis and his
+officers?</p>
+
+<p>The market-place was well thronged with venders and soldier buyers; the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers were not averse to the turning of an honest
+penny upon the needs of their oppressors, as it seemed. I watched my
+chance, and when there were no prying eyes to mark it, made the dash up
+the steps.</p>
+
+<p>Happily for the success of the adventure there was an angle in the
+narrow stair to hide me whilst I lifted the trap door in the court-room
+floor a scant half-inch and got my bearings. As I had hoped, the trap
+opened behind the jury box, and I was able to raise it cautiously and so
+to draw myself up into the room above, unseen and unheard.</p>
+
+<p>A peep around the corner of the high jury stalls showed me my Lord and
+his suite gathered about the lawyers' table in front of the bar. Of the
+staff I recognized only Stedman, the commissary-general; Tarleton,
+looking something the worse for his late illness; Major Hanger, his
+second in command, and the young Irishman, Lord Rawdon.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment of my espial, Cornwallis was speaking, and I drew back to
+listen, well enough content to be in earshot. For if my good angel had
+timed my coming I could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What we have to consider now is how best to reach Ferguson with an
+express instantly,&quot; his Lordship was saying. &quot;This rising of the
+over-mountain men is likely to prove a serious matter&mdash;not only for the
+major, but for the king's cause in the two provinces. Lacking positive
+orders to the contrary, Ferguson will fight&mdash;we all know that; and if he
+should be defeated 'twill hopelessly undo his work among the border
+loyalists and set us back another twelvemonth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then your Lordship will order him to come in with what he has?&quot; said a
+voice which I knew for Colonel Tarleton's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Instanter, had I a sure man to send.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pshaw! I can find you a hundred amongst the late royalist recruits.&quot;
+'Twas young Lord Rawdon who said this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn them!&quot; said his Lordship shortly; &quot;I would sooner trust this new
+aide of mine. He comes straight from the major and can find his way back
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tarleton laughed. &quot;I fear we shall never agree upon him, my Lord. I know
+not how he has made his peace with you, but I do assure you he is as
+great a rascal as ever went unhung. 'Tis true, as you say, I did not go
+into the particulars; but were Captain Stuart or Sir Francis Falconnet
+here, either of them would convince your Lordship in a twinkling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a little space following the colonel's
+denunciation of me, and then my Lord broke it to say: &quot;I may not be so
+credulous as you think, Colonel. Rebel spy or true-blue loyalist, he is
+safe enough for the present. In the meantime in this matter of reaching
+Ferguson we may make good use of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In what manner, your Lordship?&quot; asked one whose voice I did not
+recognize.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has come straight from Major Ferguson, as I say; and, loyalist or
+rebel, he can find his way back to Gilbert Town.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you'll never be trusting him with despatches!&quot; said Lord Rawdon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no need to trust him. He can be given the despatches with some
+hint of their purport, and of how much the king's cause will profit by
+their safe delivery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again a silence fell upon the group around the lawyers' table, and then
+some one&mdash;'twas Major Hanger, as I thought&mdash;said: &quot;'Tis an unread riddle
+for me as yet, my Lord.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Cornwallis laughed. &quot;Where are your wits this morning, gentlemen? If he
+be loyal and true, the despatches will go safe enough. If, on the other
+hand, he be a rebel and a spy, he will doubtless tamper with them; but
+in that case he will none the less ride straight enough to Major
+Ferguson's headquarters in the West.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;H'm; your Lordship is still too deep for me,&quot; said Tarleton's second in
+command. &quot;If he be a rebel and a spy, why, in God's name, should he
+carry your Lordship's letters to any but some rag-tag colonel of his own
+kidney?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My Lord laughed again. &quot;Truly, Major, you should go to a dame's school
+and learn diplomacy. If we tell him beforehand what our object is, how
+could any rebel of them all defeat it more surely than by going to
+Ferguson with a garbled message that would make him stand and fight a
+losing battle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, my Lord&mdash;the risk!&quot; cut in the commissary-general.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There need be none. An hour after he sets out we shall send a mounted
+detail after him with an Indian tracker to nose out his trail. The
+lieutenant in command will carry duplicate despatches. At the worst,
+Ireton will guide these followers to Ferguson's rendezvous; and, so far
+as we know, he is the only man who knows exactly where to find the
+major.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had heard enough. Under cover of the chorus of bravos raised by Lord
+Cornwallis's explication of his plot within a plot, I lifted the
+trap-door and made my exit as noiselessly as I had come.</p>
+
+<p>Guessing that no time would be lost in putting the plan into action, I
+made haste to be found inquiring hither and yon for the
+commander-in-chief when my Lord and his suite came down the outer stair;
+and when we were met I was quickly told of my assignment to courier
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Make your preparations to take the road within the hour, and report to
+me at Friend Stair's,&quot; said my Lord, most affably. &quot;We shall put your
+new-found loyalty to the test, Captain Ireton, by entrusting you with a
+most important mission. Go with the commissary-general and he will find
+you your mount and equipment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus dismissed, I went with Stedman, and was accorded a more gentlemanly
+welcome than my overhearings had given me leave to expect.</p>
+
+<p>On the way to the horse paddock the commissary-general told me of his
+plan to write a history of the campaign; a bit of confidence which set
+me laughing inwardly and wondering if he would put one John Ireton,
+sometime of the Scots Blues, and late captain in her Apostolic Majesty's
+Hussars, between the covers of his book. 'Tis small wonder that he did
+not. I have since had the pleasure of reading his history of the great
+war, and I find it curiously lacking in those incidents which did not
+redound to the honor and glory of the king's cause and army in the
+field.</p>
+
+<p>Not to digress, however, my makeshift mount was soon exchanged for a
+better; I was allowed to draw what I would of accoutrements and
+provender from the king's stores; and so, to cut it short, I was
+presently at the door of my Lord's headquarters fully equipped and ready
+for the road.</p>
+
+<p>I did hope in those last few moments that I might have a chance to
+exchange a word with my dear lady; might ask her forgiveness, or,
+failing so much grace of her, might at least have another sight of her
+sweet face.</p>
+
+<p>But even this poor boon was denied me. I was scarce out of the saddle
+when an aide came to conduct me to the general, and I saw no one in the
+house save my Lord himself.</p>
+
+<p>As you would guess, my instructions conformed exactly to the plan
+outlined by Lord Cornwallis in the council. I was entrusted with a
+sealed packet for delivery to Major Ferguson, and, for safety's sake, as
+my Lord explained, I was given the meat of the message to deliver
+verbally should the need arise. Ferguson was to be ordered to come in
+instantly by forced marches, if necessary, and he was on no account to
+risk a battle with the over-mountain men.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure, my dears, that I scarce drew breath till I was a-horse
+and out of the town and galloping hard on the road to that ford of
+Master Macgowan's which afterward became famous in our history under the
+misspelling &quot;Cowan's Ford.&quot; 'Twas too good to be true that I should be
+thrust thus into the very gaping mouth of opportunity, and now and again
+I would feel the packet buttoned tight beneath my hussar jacket to make
+sure 'twas not a dream to vanish at a touch.</p>
+
+<p>In the mad joy of it the spirit of prophecy came upon me, and I saw as
+if the thing were done, how at last I held the fate of the patriot cause
+in all our west country in the hollow of my hand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXVII_WHAT_BEFELL_AT_KINGS_CREEK"></a><h2>XXXVII<br />OF WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Skipping lightly over the happenings of the two days following my
+departure from Charlotte on the king's errand, I may say that after
+passing the British outposts at the crossing of the Catawba, I met
+neither friend nor foe; and from noon on I rode to the westward through
+a pitiless drizzling rain, splashed to the belt with the mire of the
+road, and having little chance to inquire my way.</p>
+
+<p>This last lack grew with the passing hours to the size of a threatening
+hazard. As you may have guessed, I knew no more than a blind man the
+route I should take; knew no more of the whereabouts of Gilbert Town and
+Major Ferguson's rendezvous than that both were some eighty miles to the
+westward.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset I had thought to feel out the way in general by cautious
+inquiry along the road; but when I came to consider of this, the risk of
+betraying my ignorance to those who followed me was too great to let me
+turn aside to any of the wayside houses; and as for chance passers-by,
+there were none&mdash;the rain kept all within doors.</p>
+
+<p>So I was constrained to gallop on without pause; and throughout that
+comfortless afternoon and the scarce less miserable day which followed,
+there were no incidents to break the dull monotony of the blind race
+save these two; that once the clouds lifted enough to give me a glimpse
+of my pursuers in a far reach to the eastward; and once again I had a
+sight of an awkward horseman in the road before me&mdash;saw him and tried to
+overtake him, and could not, for all his clumsy riding.</p>
+
+<p>Now I was curious about this lone horseman ahead for more reasons than
+one, but chiefly because my glimpse of him seemed to show me the back of
+a man whom I made sure I had left safe behind in the British guard-house
+in Charlotte, to wit: the scoundrelly little pettifogger.</p>
+
+<p>At first I scoffed at the idea. Saying he were free to leave Charlotte,
+how should he be riding post on my haphazard road to the westward? 'Twas
+against all reason, and yet the tittuping figure of which I had but a
+rain-veiled glimpse named itself Owen Pengarvin in spite of all the
+reasons I could bring to bear.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas close on eventide of the second day, the early evening gloaming of
+a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost
+in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would
+seem, from beneath the very hoofs of my horse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God save the king!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bay shied suddenly, standing with nostrils a-quiver; and I had to
+look closely to make out the little brown dot of humanity clad in russet
+homespun crouching in the path, its childish eyes wide with fear and its
+lips parted to shrill again: &quot;God save the king!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I threw a stiff leg over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to
+my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the
+sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of
+the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not
+above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might
+have taken as a pattern for one of his seraphs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What know you of the king, little one?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gran'dad told me,&quot; she lisped. &quot;If I was to see a soldier-man I must
+say, quick, 'God save the king,' or 'haps he'd eat me. Is&mdash;is you
+hungry, Mister Soldier-man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly I am that, sweetheart; but I don't eat little maids. Where is
+your grandfather?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't got any gran'favver; I said 'gran'<i>dad</i>.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, your gran'dad, then; can you take me to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know. 'Haps you'd eat <i>him</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No fear of that, my dear. Do I look as if I ate people?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gave me a long scrutiny out of the innocent eyes and then put up two
+little brown hands to be taken. &quot;I tired&quot; she said; and my sore heart
+went warm within me when I took her in my arms and cuddled her. After a
+long-drawn sigh of contentment, she said: &quot;My name Polly; what's yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may call me Jack, if you please&mdash;Captain Jack, if that comes the
+easier. And now will you let me take you to your gran'dad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, and I spoke to the bay and mounted, still holding her
+closely in my arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me quickly which way to go, Polly,&quot; I said; for besides being, as
+I would fear, far out of the way to Gilbert Town, the last hilltop to
+the rear had given me another sight of my shadowing pursuers riding hard
+as if they meant to overtake me.</p>
+
+<p>The little maid sat up straight on the saddle horn and looked about her
+as if to get her bearings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That way,&quot; she said, pointing short to the right; and I wheeled the
+horse into a blind path that wound in and out among the trees for a long
+half mile, to end at a little clearing on the banks of a small stream.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the clearing was a rude log cabin; and in the open
+doorway stood a man bent and aged, a patriarchal figure with white hair
+falling to his shoulders and a snowy beard such as Aaron might have
+worn. At sight of me the old watcher disappeared within the house, but a
+moment later he was out again, fingering the lock of an ancient
+Queen's-arm.</p>
+
+<p>I drew rein quickly, and the little maid sat up and saw the musket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't shoot, gran'dad!&quot; she cried. &quot;He's Cappy Jack, and he doesn't
+eat folkses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this the old man came to meet us, though still with the clumsy musket
+held at the ready.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These be parlous times, sir,&quot; he said, half in apology, I thought. And
+then: &quot;You have made friends with my little maid, and I owe you somewhat
+for bringing her safe home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said I; &quot;the debt is mine, inasmuch as I have the little one for
+my friend. 'Tis long since I have held a trusting child in my arms, I do
+assure you, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bowed as grandly as any courtier. &quot;I hope her trust is not misplaced,
+sir; though for the matter of that, we have little enough now to take or
+leave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have given it all to the king?&quot; said I, feeling my way as I had
+need to.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The king has taken all, sir, as you see,&quot; this with a wave of the hand
+to point me to the forlorn homestead. &quot;There is naught left me save this
+poor hut and my little maid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Taken,' you say? Then you are not of the king's side?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He came a step nearer and faced me boldly. &quot;Listen, sir: two of my sons
+were left on the bloody field of Camden, and the butcher Banastre
+Tarleton slew the other two at Fishing Creek. A month since a band of
+roving savages, armed with King George's muskets, mind you, sir, came
+down upon us at Northby, and this little maid's mother&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and choked; and the child looked up into my face with her
+blue eyes full of nameless terror. &quot;Oh, I want my mammy!&quot; she said.
+&quot;Won't you find her for me, Cappy Jack?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I slipped from the saddle, still clasping the little one tightly in my
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough, sir,&quot; I said, when I could trust myself to speak. &quot;This same
+King George's minions have made me a homeless outcast, too. I live but
+to give some counter stroke, if I may.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha!&quot; said the old man, starting back; &quot;then you are for our side? But
+your uniform&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that of an Austrian officer, my good sir, which I should right
+gladly exchange for the buff and blue, but that I can serve the cause
+better in this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He dropped the Queen's-arm, took the child from me and bade me welcome
+to his cabin and all it held. But I was not minded to make him a sharer
+in my private peril.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I. &quot;Tell me how I may find Gilbert Town and Major Ferguson's
+rendezvous, and I will ride whilst I can see the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me narrowly. &quot;Ferguson left Gilbert Town some days since.
+If 'tis the place you seek, you are gone far out of your way; if 'tis
+the man&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the man,&quot; I cut in hastily.</p>
+
+<p>The patriarch shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you be of our side, as you say, he will hang you out of hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I can make my errand good, I care little how soon he hangs me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what may your errand be? Mayhap I can help you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is to bring him to a stand till the mountain men can overtake him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man trembled with excitement like a boy going into his first
+battle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, if you could&mdash;if you could!&quot; he cried. &quot;But 'tis too late, now.
+Listen: his present camp is but three miles to the westward on Buffalo
+Creek. I was there no longer ago than the Wednesday. I&mdash;I made my
+submission to him&mdash;curse him&mdash;so that I might mayhap learn of his plans.
+He told me all; how that now he was safe; that the mountaineers were
+gone off from the fording of the Broad on a false scent; that Tarleton
+with four hundred of the legion would soon be marching to his relief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I stole away when I could, and that night took horse and rode twenty
+miles to Tom Sumter's camp at Flint Hill&mdash;all to little purpose, I fear.
+Poor Tom is still desperately sick of his Fishing Creek wounds, and
+Colonel Lacey was the only officer fit to go after Shelby and the
+mountain men to set them straight. I should have gone myself, but&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stay, my good friend,&quot; said I; &quot;you go too fast for me. If Ferguson is
+still out of communication with the main at Charlotte, we may halt him
+yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man made a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a thing done because it is as good as done. The major will break
+camp and march to-morrow morning, and he can reach Charlotte at ease in
+two days. What with their losing of his trail, the mountain men are
+those same two days behind him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None the less, we shall halt him,&quot; said I. &quot;Have you ever an inkhorn
+and a quill in your cabin?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Both; at your service, sir. But I can not understand&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We may call it the little maid's judgment on those who have made her
+fatherless. But for her stopping of me I should have come unprepared
+into the camp of the enemy. I am the bearer of a letter from Lord
+Cornwallis to this same Major Ferguson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You?&mdash;a bearer of Lord Cornwallis's despatches?&quot; The old man put a
+blade's length between us and held the little one aloft as if he feared
+I might do her a mischief. I laughed and bade him be comforted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a long story, and I may not take the time to tell it now. But a
+word will suffice. Like yourself, I made my submission&mdash;and for the same
+purpose. My Lord accepted it and made me his despatch-bearer because he
+thought I knew the way to Ferguson when no one else knew it. But enough
+of this; time presses. Let me have ink and the quill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old man led the way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my
+disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet;
+but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the
+paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab
+table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a
+peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding
+by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk engagement with
+the over-mountain men.</p>
+
+<p>How to change such an order to reverse it in effect, I knew no more than
+a yokel; but here again my ancient ally showed himself a man of parts.
+Dressing the pen to make it the fellow of that used by my Lord
+Cornwallis, he scanned the handwriting of the letter closely, made a few
+practice pot-hooks to get the imitative hang of it, and wrote this
+<i>postscriptum</i> at the bottom of the sheet.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his despatches.
+Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the legion, will take
+the road for you to-night. If battle is forced upon you, make a stand
+and hold the enemy in check till reinforcements come.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Cornwallis.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve.
+'Twas a most beautiful forgery. My Lord's crabbed handwriting was copied
+to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could
+have told which was his own; 'twas the same circle &quot;C,&quot; the same
+printing &quot;r,&quot; the same heavy precision throughout.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Capital!&quot; said I. &quot;Now, if the lightning would but strike these
+pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand's turn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot; said the patriarch; &quot;are you followed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him I was; told him of my Lord's plot within a plot&mdash;that three
+light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate
+despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>At this the old warhorse&mdash;I learned afterward that he had fought through
+the French and Indian war&mdash;wagged his beard and his eye flashed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must stop them,&quot; he said. &quot;Three of them, do you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Three white men and an Indian trailer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha! If it were not for the little maid.... Let me think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He fell to pacing up and down before the fire on the hearth, and I took
+the small one on my knee to let her chatter to me. 'Twas five full
+minutes before my ancient gave me the worth of his cogitations, but when
+he did speak it was much to the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These marplot rear-guards of yours will spoil it all if they come to
+Ferguson's camp either before or after you. Do they know the major's
+present whereabouts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No more than I did an hour ago. As I take it, they are depending on me
+to show them the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then; dead men tell no tales.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, my good friend, you forget there are four of them and only two of
+us! We should stand little chance with them in fair fight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again the old man's eyes snapped and glowed as if pent-fires were behind
+them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it fair fight when Tarleton's men rode in upon Tom Sumter's rest
+camp at Fishing Creek and cut down this little maid's father whilst he
+was naked and bathing in the stream? Was it fair fight when King
+George's Indian devils came down in the dead of night upon our
+defenseless house at Northby? Never talk to me of fairness, sir, whilst
+all this bloody tyranny is afoot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought upon it for a little space. 'Twas none so easy to decide. On
+one hand, stern loyalty to the cause I had espoused passed instant
+sentence on these four men whose lives stood in the way; on the other,
+common humanity cried out and called it murder.</p>
+
+<p>Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy
+since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone
+valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out
+of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my
+trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race.
+I could not do it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I, firmly. &quot;These followers of mine must be stopped, as you
+say, else there is no need of my going on. But there must be no
+butcher's work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take
+another's,&quot; quoth he.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly; and I am most willing on both heads. But we have had enough and
+more than enough of midnight massacre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we
+were both waxing warm upon it. But in the midst the little maid came
+running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Injun man!&quot; was all she could say; but that was enough. At a bound I
+reached the door. An Indian was at my horse's head, loosing the halter,
+as I thought. Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara
+was at his back.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, he had the wit not to move. &quot;No kill Uncanoola,&quot; he muttered,
+this without the stirring of a muscle. Then, as if he were talking to
+the horse: &quot;White squaw, she send 'um word; say 'good by.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mistress Margery, you mean? Do you come from her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She send 'um word; say 'good by,'&quot; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What else did she say?&quot; I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No say anyt'ing else: say 'good by.'&quot; He turned upon me at that and I
+saw why he had kept his face averted. He had on the war paint of a
+Cherokee chief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uncanoola good Chelakee now,&quot; he grinned. &quot;Help redcoat soldier find
+Captain Long-knife. Wah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of
+the thing staggered me. He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of
+the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian
+tracker to lift my trail, 'twas he who had volunteered. But now my
+spirits rose. With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully
+and yet fairly with my rear-guard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are your masters now?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He spat upon the ground. &quot;Catawba chief has no master,&quot; he said,
+proudly. &quot;Redcoat pale-faces yonder,&quot; pointing back the way I had come.
+&quot;Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must take them,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. &quot;Kill 'um all; take scalp. Wah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling. But I undertook to
+cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the
+Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable
+battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his
+pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old
+benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.</p>
+
+<p>So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had
+been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen's-arm for a
+weapon. So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out. When the
+night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their
+camp, sparing life as we could.</p>
+
+<p>When all was settled, the old man gave us a supper of his humble fare,
+after which we went into the open again to sit out the hours of waiting.
+The rain had ceased, but the night was cloudy and the darkness a soft
+black veil to shroud the nearest objects. High overhead the autumn wind
+was sighing in the tree-tops, and now and again a sharper gust would
+bring down a pattering volley of lodged rain-drops on the fallen leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Uncanoola sat apart in stoical silence, smoking his long-stemmed pipe.
+The old man and I talked in low tones, or rather he would tell me of his
+past whilst I sat and listened, holding the little maid in my arms.</p>
+
+<p>After a time the child fell asleep, and I craved permission to put her
+in the little crib bed in the chimney corner. The flickering light of
+the fire fell upon her innocent face when I loosed the clasp of the tiny
+hands about my neck and laid her down. Again the wave of softness
+submerged me and I bent to leave a kiss upon the sweet unconscious lips.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, my dears, you may smile again, if you will; but at that moment I had
+a far-off glimpse of the beatitude of fatherhood; I was no longer the
+hard old soldier I have drawn for you; I was but a man, hungering and
+thirsting for the love of a wife and trusting, clinging little children
+like this sweet maid.</p>
+
+<p>I rose, turning my back upon the chimney corner and its holdings with a
+sigh. For now the time was come for action, and I must needs be a man of
+blood and iron again.</p>
+
+<p>Lacking the Catawba to guide us, I doubt if either the old man or I
+could have found my rearguard's bivouac near the trail I had left. But
+Uncanoola led us straight through the pitchy darkness; and when we were
+come upon the three soldiers we found them all asleep around the handful
+of camp-fire.</p>
+
+<p>'Twould have been murder outright to kill them thus; and now I think the
+old patriarch forgot his wrongs and was as merciful as I. But not so the
+Catawba. He had armed himself with a stout war-club, and before I was
+free to stop him he had knocked two of the three sleepers senseless, and
+would have battered out their brains but for the old man's intervention.</p>
+
+<p>As for the officer, I had flung myself upon him in the rush and was
+having a pretty handful of him. But though he was broad in the
+shoulders, and as agile as a cat, he was taken at a sleeping man's
+disadvantage, and so I presently had the better of him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough, man! 'tis as good as a feast!&quot; he cried, when I had him fast
+pinioned; and thereupon I let him have breath and freedom to sit up. In
+the act he had his first good sight of me, as I had mine of him. 'Twas
+Tybee and no other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gad! my Captain,&quot; he said, feeling his throat. &quot;If you have a grip like
+that for your friends, I'm damned glad I'm not your enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you are,&quot; I rejoined, rather shamefacedly, yet thankful to the
+finger-tips that I had not consented to a massacre. &quot;I am for the
+Congress and the Commonwealth, Lieutenant, and you are my prisoner. May
+I trouble you for the despatches you carry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at me with a queer grimace on his boyish face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The devil! but you're a cool hand, Captain Ireton! Whatever you were in
+that coil at Appleby, you've led the spy's long suit this time. And I'm
+not sure whether I like you any the worse for it, if so be you must be a
+rebel.&quot; And with that, he gave me the sealed packet and asked what I
+would do with him.</p>
+
+<p>His query set me thinking. As for the two stunned troopers, I meant to
+turn them over to the old man for safe keeping; but I was loath to make
+it harder than need be for this good-natured youngster. So I put him
+upon his honor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know what this packet contains?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. &quot;My Lord did not honor me with his confidence. I was to
+follow you in to Major Ferguson's camp, deliver the despatches, and
+vanish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good; then you need tell no lies. When the Indian has fetched my horse,
+I shall ride to Ferguson's camp, and you may ride with me. I shall ask
+no more than this; that you do not fight again till you are exchanged;
+and that you will not tell Major Ferguson whose prisoner you are. Do you
+accept the terms?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gad! I'd be a fool not to. But what's in the wind, Captain? Surely you
+can tell me, now that I am safely out of the running.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will know in a day or two; and in the meantime ignorance is your
+best safety. You can tell Major Ferguson that you were waylaid on the
+road by a party of the enemy, and that you were paroled and fell in with
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked a little rueful, as a good soldier would, but was disposed to
+make the best of a bad bargain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's my hand on it,&quot; he said; and a little later we had dragged the
+two troopers to the cabin, where the old man became surety for their
+safe keeping, and were feeling our way cautiously westward at the heels
+of the Catawba who had taken his directions from our patriarch.</p>
+
+<p>We pressed forward in silence through the shadowy labyrinth of the wood
+for a time, but at the crossing of a small runlet where we would stop to
+let the horses drink, Tybee burst out a-laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis as good as a play,&quot; he said. &quot;Three several times I've had to
+change my mind about you, Captain Ireton, and I'm not cock-sure I have
+your measure yet. But I'll say this: if you've strung my Lord
+successfully, you'll be the first to do it and come off alive in the
+end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The end is not yet, my good friend; and I may not come off better than
+the others,&quot; I rejoined. And with that we fared on again till we could
+see the camp-fires of Ferguson's little army twinkling between the tree
+trunks.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXVIII_WE_FIND_THE_GUN-MAKER"></a><h2>XXXVIII<br />IN WHICH WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>As you may be sure, Major Patrick Ferguson was far too good a soldier to
+leave his camp unguarded on any side, and whilst we were yet a far
+cannon-shot from the glimmering fires a sentry's challenge halted us.</p>
+
+<p>To the man's &quot;Halt! Who goes there?&quot; I gave the word &quot;Friends,&quot; salving
+my conscience for the needful lie as I might.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Advance, friends, and give the countersign.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a
+paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken
+to Major Ferguson's headquarters. There was some little cautious
+demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for
+the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field
+commander.</p>
+
+<p>I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it. The little
+army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking
+and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the
+camp-fires of these auxiliaries. But a different air was abroad in the
+camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of
+the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>Major Ferguson's tent was on a hillock some distance back from the
+stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and
+myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our
+challenging on the sentry line.</p>
+
+<p>Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table,
+transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with
+gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism&mdash;the
+disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious
+Scotchman was the inventor.</p>
+
+<p>Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave
+us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only
+when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well,&quot; was all the answer the
+Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.</p>
+
+<p>Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a
+sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing
+despatches&quot;&mdash;so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue
+clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence
+than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully
+doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken
+from Tybee.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter
+action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise &quot;gleg
+at the uptak',&quot; as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel
+gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of
+benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much
+more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of
+failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the
+timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was
+reaching for the packet&mdash;nay, when he had it in his hand&mdash;I started back
+with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous <i>skir-r-r</i> of a
+rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.</p>
+
+<p>In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the
+doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in
+their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing
+moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and
+yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all
+across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my
+plot&mdash;and, belike, the plotter as well&mdash;was secured and quickly juggled
+into hiding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damme! see now what you've done; you've spilt my breech-charger all
+about the place!&quot; rasped the major, when all was over. And then: &quot;Who
+the devil are ye, anyway; and what do ye want wi' me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I clicked my heels, saluted, and gave him the express from my Lord&mdash;the
+right one, this time. He tore off the wrapping, swore a hearty soldier
+oath when he read the fore part of the letter and clapped his leg
+joyfully, like the brave gentleman that he was, when he came to the
+<i>postscriptum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye're a fine fellow, Captain; ye've brought me good news,&quot; he said;
+then he bade an aide call Captain de Peyster, his second in command, and
+in the same breath gave Tybee and me in charge to an ensign for our
+billeting for the night.</p>
+
+<p>You will conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy
+planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into
+the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the
+huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions
+against hallooing before you are out of the wood. Captain de Peyster was
+come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was
+a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black,
+his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the
+sentries, burst into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!&quot; he shrieked, pointing at me.</p>
+
+<p>As you would guess, all talk paused at this dramatic interruption, and
+all eyes were turned upon me. Had the little viper been content to rest
+his charge upon the simple accusation, I know not what might have
+happened. But when he got his breath he burst out in a tirade of the
+foulest abuse, cursing me up one side and down the other, and ending in
+a gibbering fit of rage that left him pallid and foaming at the
+lips&mdash;and gave me my cue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the little madman of Queensborough,&quot; I said, coolly, explaining to
+the bluff major. &quot;His mania takes the form of a curious hatred for me,
+though I know not why. Two days since, he was put in arrest by my Lord's
+authority for threatening my life and that of his master's daughter.
+Now, it would seem, he has broken jail and followed me hither.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A lunatic, eh? He looks it, every inch,&quot; said the major; and the
+blackguard lawyer, hearing my counter accusation, was doing his best to
+give it a savor of likelihood by fighting frantically with the two
+soldiers who had followed him into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out wi' him!&quot; commanded the major. &quot;We've no time to foolish away wi' a
+Bedlamite. Take him away and peg him out, and gi' him a dash o' water to
+cool his head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his
+attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing. So
+he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and
+when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.</p>
+
+<p>Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our
+blankets before one of the camp-fires. But just as I was dropping asleep
+he broke out with, &quot;I would you might tell me what piece of rebel
+villainy this is that I've been a winking accomplice to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;'Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw. And
+surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he's thirsting
+for. Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XXXIX_THE_THUNDER_OF_THE_CAPTAINS"></a><h2>XXXIX<br />THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised
+about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to
+find a strong position. From this it was evident that a battle was
+imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the
+patriots.</p>
+
+<p>From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of
+the situation. A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of
+the over-mountain men of Clark's party and had sent them to the
+settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form&mdash;or rather with
+the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of
+an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.</p>
+
+<p>This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted.
+Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the
+Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the
+stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more
+Virginians.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other
+scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland,
+Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as
+the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers.
+Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it
+best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army;
+and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a
+pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be
+little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered
+himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis's
+commands to the contrary. In his despatches he was continually urging
+the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a
+sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted
+enemy. But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him
+turned whatever scale there was to turn. He had now with him some eleven
+hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had
+every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the
+night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major
+Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.</p>
+
+<p>For his battle-ground Major Ferguson chose the top of a forest-covered
+hill, the last and lowest elevation in the spur named that day King's
+Mountain.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects the position was all that could be desired. There was
+room on the flat hilltop for an orderly disposition of the fighting
+force; and the slopes in front and rear were steep enough to give an
+attacking enemy a sharp climb. Moreover, there was a plentiful
+outcropping of stone on the summit, scantiest on the broad or outer end
+of the hill, and this was so disposed as to form a natural breastwork
+for the defenders.</p>
+
+<p>But there were disadvantages also, the chief of these being the heavy
+wooding of the slopes to screen the advance of the assaulting party; and
+while the major was busy making his dispositions for the fight, I was on
+tenter-hooks for fear he would have the trees felled to belt the
+breastwork with a clear space.</p>
+
+<p>He did not do it, being restrained, as I afterward learned, by his
+uncertainty as to whether or no the mountain men had cannon. Against
+artillery posted on the neighboring hillocks the trees were his best
+defense, and so he left them standing.</p>
+
+<p>As you would suppose, my situation was now become most trying, and poor
+Tybee's was scarcely less so. Knowing my name and circumstance, and
+having, moreover, a high regard for my old field-marshal's genius, Major
+Ferguson was very willing to make use of my experience. These askings
+from one whom I knew for a brave and honorable gentleman let me fall
+between two stools. As a patriot spy, it was my duty to turn the major's
+confidence as a weapon against him. But as an officer and a gentleman I
+could by no means descend to such depths of perfidy.</p>
+
+<p>In this dilemma I sought to steer a middle course, saying that I must
+beg exemption because my long hard ride had re-opened my old sword
+wound&mdash;as indeed it had. So the major generously let me be, thus heaping
+coals of fire upon my head; and I kept out of his way, consorting with
+Tybee, who, like myself, must be an onlooker in the coming fray.</p>
+
+<p>As for the lieutenant, he was all agog to learn more than I dared tell
+him, and it irked him most nettlesomely to have a fight in prospect in
+the which he was in honor bound not to take a hand. Time and again he
+begged me to release him from his parole; and when I would not, he was
+for fighting me a duel with his freedom for a stake.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Consider of it, Captain Ireton,&quot; he pleaded. &quot;For God's sake, put
+yourself in my place. Here am I, in the camp of my friends, gagged and
+bound by my word to you whilst your infernal plot, whatever it may be,
+works out to the <i>coup de gr&acirc;ce</i>. Ye gods! it would have been far more
+merciful had you run me through in our wrestling match last night!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mayhap,&quot; said I, curtly. &quot;'Twas but the choice between two evils.
+Nevertheless, in time to come I hope you may conclude that this is the
+lesser of the two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I'm damned if I shall!&quot; he retorted, fuming like a disappointed
+boy, and minding me most forcibly of my hot-headed Richard Jennifer. And
+then he would repeat: &quot;I thought you were my friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I am, as man to man. But this matter concerns the welfare of a cause
+to which I have sworn fealty. Take your own words back, my lad, and put
+yourself in my place. Can I do less than hold you to your pledge?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I suppose not,&quot; he would say, grumpily. &quot;Yet 'tis hard; most
+devilish hard!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the fortune of war. Another day the shoe may be upon the other
+foot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The baggage wagons had been massed across the broad end of the hill to
+eke out the stone breastwork, and the last of these arguing colloquies
+took place beneath one of the wagons whither we had crept for shelter
+from the rain, which was now pouring again. In the midst of our talk,
+Major Ferguson dived to share our shelter, dripping like a water
+spaniel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha! ye're carpet soldiers, both of ye!&quot; he snorted, and then he began
+to swear piteously at the rain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twill be worse for the enemy than for us,&quot; said Tybee. &quot;We can at
+least keep our powder dry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn the enemy!&quot; quoth the major, cheerfully. &quot;So the weather does not
+put the creeks up and hold Tarleton and Major Gibbs back from us, 'tis a
+small matter whether the rebels' powder be dry or soaked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have made all your dispositions, Major?&quot; Tybee asked.</p>
+
+<p>The major nodded. &quot;All in apple-pie order, no thanks to either of ye.
+'Tis a strong position, this, eh, Captain Ireton? I'm thinking not all
+the rebel banditti out of hell will drive us from it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis good enough,&quot; I agreed; and here the talk was broken off by the
+major's diving out to berate some of his Tory militiamen who were
+preparing to make a night of it with a jug of their vile country liquor.</p>
+
+<p>The rain continued all that Friday night and well on into the forenoon
+of the Saturday. During this interval we waited with scouts out for the
+upcoming of the mountain men. At noon Major Ferguson sent a final
+express to Lord Cornwallis, urging the hurrying on of the
+reinforcements, not knowing that his former despatch had been
+intercepted, nor that Tarleton had not as yet started to the rescue. A
+little later the scouts began to come in one by one with news of the
+approaching riflemen.</p>
+
+<p>There was but a small body of them, not above a thousand men in all, so
+the spies said, and my heart misgave me. They were without cannon and
+they lacked bayonets; and moreover, when all was said, they were but
+militia, all untried save in border warfare with the Indians. Could they
+successfully assault the fortified camp whose defenders&mdash;thanks to the
+major's ingenuity&mdash;had fitted butcher-knives to the muzzles of their
+guns in lieu of bayonets? Nay, rather would they have the courage to
+try?</p>
+
+<p>'Twas late in the afternoon before these questions were answered. The
+rain had ceased, and the chill October sunlight filtered aslant through
+the trees. With the clearing skies a cold wind had sprung up, and on the
+hilltop the men cowered behind the rock breastwork and waited in
+strained silence. At the last moment Major Ferguson sent Captain de
+Peyster to me with the request that I take command of the Tory force set
+apart to defend the wagon barricade&mdash;this if my weariness would permit.
+I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say no more, Captain,&quot; said this generous soldier, when I began some
+lame plea for further exemption; &quot;I had forgot your sword-cut. Take
+shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick
+Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he
+insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was&mdash;and paid the
+penalty.</p>
+
+<p>I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the
+drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry
+from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee
+gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be
+seen, and I stood with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your friends are running,&quot; he said, when there was no reply to the
+opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the
+slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to
+right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not,&quot; I objected, denying the apparent fact. &quot;They have come
+too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it
+at the top,&quot; he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so;
+here they come!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive
+with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after
+volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the
+dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars
+I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run,
+these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the
+hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting
+encouragements of the leaders&mdash;this until their circling line was
+completed.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to
+shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began
+to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings
+and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this fine-bead target practice&mdash;for it was naught
+else&mdash;was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear,
+crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all
+abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end
+of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was
+appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed
+commands of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging
+his men up to still closer quarters. &quot;A little nearer, my brave boys; a
+little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as
+good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought
+as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them
+did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them
+witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight
+for fear's sake.</p>
+
+<p>And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous
+in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and
+there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew
+thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but
+it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of
+the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster,
+too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's
+Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de
+Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen
+some little way down the slope.</p>
+
+<p>But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little
+circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the
+wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what
+was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must
+picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose
+upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage
+ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of
+&quot;God save the king!&quot; yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in
+homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front
+and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a hell set free, with no
+quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
+wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
+dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.</p>
+
+<p>In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
+coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
+with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
+work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
+and let me die a soldier's death.</p>
+
+<p>So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
+fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
+of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving
+as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently
+down into the valley of shadows.</p>
+
+<p>And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying
+Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon
+between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I
+heard the crack of the Deckard, the <i>zip</i> of the bullet singing at my
+ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a
+rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I
+felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another
+time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the butt
+of his rifle&mdash;and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him. I saw
+the grapple, sprang to my feet and whipped out my sword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop!&quot; I commanded; &quot;you have broken your parole, Lieutenant!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The freed borderer glared from one to the other of us. &quot;Loonies!&quot; he
+yelled; &quot;I'll slaughter the both of ye!&quot; And so he would have done, I
+make no doubt, had we not laid hold of him together and heaved him back
+over the breastwork.</p>
+
+<p>These are but incidents, points of contact where the fray touched us two
+at the wagon barricade. I pass them by with the mention, as I have
+passed by the sterner horrors of that furious killing-time. These last
+are too large for my poor pen. As we could gather in the din and
+tumult, the mountain men rushed again and again to the attack, and as
+often the brave major, or De Peyster, led the bayonet charges that
+pushed them back. Yet in the end the unerring bullet outpressed the
+bayonet; there came a time when flesh and blood could no longer endure
+the death-dealing cross-fire from front and rear.</p>
+
+<p>I saw the end was near when the major ordered the final charge, and
+Captain de Peyster formed his line and led it forward at a double-quick.
+The mountaineers held more than half the hilltop now, and this forlorn
+hope was to try to drive them down the farther slopes. On it went, and I
+could see the men pitch and tumble out of the line until at
+bayonet-reach of the riflemen there were less than a dozen afoot and fit
+to make the push.</p>
+
+<p>De Peyster fought his way back to the wagons, gasping and bloody. Some
+of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely
+wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod
+into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the
+white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat
+it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in his word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis no use, Major; there is no more fight left in us! Five minutes
+more of this and we'll be shot down to a man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferguson's reply was a raging oath broad enough to cover all the enemy
+and his own beaten remnant as well; and then, before a hand could be
+lifted to stay him, he had wheeled his horse and was galloping straight
+for the patriot line at the farther extremity of the hilltop.</p>
+
+<p>What he meant to do will never be known till that great day when all
+secrets shall be revealed. For that furious oath was this brave
+gentleman's last word to us or to any. A dozen bounds, it may be, the
+good charger carried him; then the storm of rifle-bullets beat him from
+the saddle. And so died one of the gallantest officers that ever did an
+unworthy king's work on the field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of
+the British commander. 'Twas little to our credit, but I may not pass it
+over in silence. De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white
+flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer
+and many others. Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once
+more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the
+panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God!&quot; said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line
+with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as
+he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.</p>
+
+<a name="image-4"><!-- Image 4 --></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/image4.jpg"><img src="images/image4-tb.jpg" height="500" width="343"
+alt="Illustration"
+title="Illustration" /></a>
+</center>
+
+<p>I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee
+was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when
+I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.
+A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's
+father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de
+Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XL_VAE_VICTIS"></a><h2>XL<br />VAE VICTIS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of
+this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more
+on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the
+dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my
+dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the
+victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.</p>
+
+<p>But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your
+mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle
+of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with
+the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from
+Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought
+somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.</p>
+
+<p>Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many
+of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors
+had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder
+that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful
+counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the
+cord and tree.</p>
+
+<p>But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian,
+William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay
+and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night,
+made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the
+groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday
+found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.</p>
+
+<p>With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and
+since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching,
+the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard
+for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but
+'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side
+by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just
+before the ending of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready
+fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal
+from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton
+with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the
+mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the
+hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.</p>
+
+<p>As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my
+hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously
+hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.</p>
+
+<p>But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of
+colonels and put to the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir,&quot; said Isaac Shelby, looking
+me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. &quot;Explain your
+rank and standing, if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only
+black looks for my pains.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,&mdash;too strange to be believable,&quot; quoth
+Shelby. &quot;You are a traitor, Captain Ireton&mdash;of the kind we need not
+cumber ourselves with on a march.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who says that word of me?&quot; I demanded, caring not much for that to
+which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.</p>
+
+<p>Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. &quot;Stand out,
+John Whittlesey,&quot; he directed; and I found myself face to face with that
+rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at
+the fording of the Catawba.</p>
+
+<p>This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week
+earlier I had passed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this
+though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the
+witness himself, he had misdoubted me all along, but the colonel had
+trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of
+which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he
+confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company
+with me on the road to Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>I looked from one to another of my judges.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not all,&quot; said Shelby. &quot;Mr. Pengarvin, stand forth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was another stir in the backgrounding group and the pettifogger
+edged his way into the circle, keeping well out of hand-reach of me. How
+he had made shift to escape from Ferguson's men, to change sides, and to
+turn up thus serenely in the ranks of the over-mountain men, I know not
+to this day, nor ever shall know.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell these gentlemen what you have told me,&quot; said Shelby, briefly; and
+the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how
+in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the
+length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen
+Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted
+aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson. Also,
+he suggested that if I should be searched some proof of my duplicity
+might be found upon me.</p>
+
+<p>At this William Campbell nodded to two of his Virginians, and I was
+searched forthwith, and that none too gently. In the breast pocket of my
+hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had
+taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the
+interview with Major Ferguson.</p>
+
+<p>Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around
+among his colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir,&quot; he said to me,
+sternly. &quot;'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it
+sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you
+aught further to say, Captain Ireton?&mdash;aught that may excuse us for not
+leaving you behind us in a halter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely
+the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me?
+Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then
+mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they
+would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down
+here.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of
+a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the
+manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same
+bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the
+storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay
+tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim
+Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers;
+the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in
+the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a
+bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Score one for me, Jack!&quot; he cried. &quot;We were fair at t'other end of the
+mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two
+Carolinas who could swear the match of that.&quot; Then he whirled upon my
+judges. &quot;What is this, gentlemen?&mdash;a court martial? Captain Ireton is my
+friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought
+in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as
+the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he
+said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay
+the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just
+found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and
+undelivered. And the tenor of it was precisely opposite to that of an
+order calculated to delay the major's march, as Mr. Jennifer could see
+if he would read it.</p>
+
+<p>While Sevier was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of
+his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about
+with red tape.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Pears to me like you Injun-killers from t'other side o' the mounting
+is in a mighty hot sweat to hang somebody,&quot; he said, as coolly as if he
+were addressing a mob of underlings. &quot;Here's a mess o' billy-doos with
+Lord Cornwallis's name to 'em that I found 'mongst Major Ferguson's
+leavings. If you'll look 'em over, maybe you'll find out, immejitly <i>if</i>
+not sooner, that Cap'n John here is telling ye the plumb truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The papers were examined hastily, and presently John Sevier lighted upon
+the despatch I had carried and delivered. Thereat the colonels put their
+heads together; and then my case was re-opened, with Sevier as
+spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have a letter here which appears to be the original order to
+Ferguson, Captain Ireton. Can you repeat from memory the <i>postscriptum</i>
+which you say was added to it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave the gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and
+thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one
+another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng
+that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer to
+wake the echoes.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas while this burst of gratulation was abuzz that Ephraim Yeates
+raised a cry of his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop that there black-legged imp o' the law!&quot; he shouted, pushing his
+way out of the circle. &quot;He's the one that ought to hang!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a rush for the wagon barricade, a clatter of horse-hoofs on
+the hillside below, and Yeates's rifle went to his face. But the bullet
+flew wide, and the black-garbed figure clinging to the horse's mane was
+soon out of sight among the trees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ez I allow, ye'd better look out for that yaller-skinned little
+varmint, Cap'n John,&quot; quoth the old man, carefully wiping his rifle
+preparatory to reloading it. &quot;He's rank pizen, he is, and ye'll have to
+break his neck sooner 'r later. I 'lowed to save ye the trouble, but old
+Bess got mighty foul yestiddy, with all the shootings and goings on, and
+I hain't got no lead-brush to clean her out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now that I was fully exonerated I was free to go and come as I chose;
+nay, more, I was urged to cast in my lot with the over-mountain
+partizans. As to this, I took counsel with Richard Jennifer whilst the
+colonels were setting their commands in order for the march and loading
+the prisoners with the captured guns and ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is to the fore, Dick?&quot; I asked; &quot;more fighting?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lad shook his head. &quot;Never another blow, I fear, Jack. These fellows
+crossed the mountain to whip Ferguson. Having done it they will go
+home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not forego a hearty curse upon this worst of all militia
+weaknesses, the disposition to disperse as soon as ever a battle was
+fought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis nigh on to a crime,&quot; said I. &quot;This victory, smartly followed up,
+might well be the turning of the tide for us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the lad would not admit the qualifying condition. &quot;'Twill be no less
+as it is,&quot; he declared. &quot;Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the
+cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my
+Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will
+have plenty of time to set himself in motion, slow as he is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas then I had an inspiration, and I thought upon it for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are your plans, Richard?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. &quot;I have none worth the name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you are not committed to Colonel Sevier for a term of service?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be
+fighting hereaway,&mdash;Ephraim Yeates and I,&mdash;and we came as volunteers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To
+make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be
+apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the
+news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say. Let us take horse and ride
+post, we two; you to Gates at Hillsborough, and I to Charlotte.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had thought of my part of that,&quot; he said in a muse. Then he came
+alive to the risk I should run. &quot;But you can't well go back to
+Cornwallis now, Jack: 'tis playing with death. There will be other
+news-carriers&mdash;there are sure to be; and a single breath to whisper what
+you have done will hang you higher than Haman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged at this. &quot;'Tis but a war hazard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me curiously. I saw a shrewd question in his eyes and set
+instant action as a barrier in the way of its asking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us find Colonel Sevier and beg us the loan of a pair of horses,&quot;
+said I; and so we were kept from coming upon the dangerous ground of
+pointed questions and evasive answers.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat to my surprise, both Sevier and Shelby fell in at once with our
+project, commending it heartily; and I learned from the lips of that
+courtliest of frontiersmen, &quot;Nolichucky Jack,&quot; the real reason for the
+proposed hurried return of the over-mountain men. The Cherokees, never
+to be trusted, had, as it seemed, procured war supplies from the British
+posts to the southward, and were even now on the verge of an uprising.
+By forced marches these hardy borderers hoped to reach their homes in
+time to defend them. Otherwise, as both commanders assured us, they
+would take the field with Gates.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have done what we could, Captain Ireton, and not altogether what we
+would,&quot; said Sevier in the summing-up. &quot;It remains now for General Gates
+to drive home the wedge we have entered.&quot; Then he looked me full in the
+eyes and asked if I thought Horatio Gates would be the man to beetle
+that wedge well into the log.</p>
+
+<p>I made haste to say that I knew little of the general; that I was but a
+prejudiced witness at best, since my father had known and misliked the
+man in Braddock's ill-fated campaign against the French in '55. But
+Richard spoke his mind more freely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis not in the man at this pass, Colonel Sevier,&quot; he would say; &quot;not
+after Camden. I know our Carolinians as well as any, and they will never
+stand a second time under a defeated leader. If General Washington would
+send us some one else; or, best of all, if he would but come himself&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;George Washington; ah, there is a man, indeed,&quot; said Sevier, his
+dark-blue eyes lighting up. &quot;Whilst he lives, there is always a good
+hope. But we must be doing, gentlemen, and so must you. God speed you
+both. Our compliments to General Gates, Mr. Jennifer; and you may tell
+him what I have told you&mdash;that but for our redskin threateners we should
+right gladly join him. As for Lord Cornwallis, you, Captain Ireton, will
+know best what to say to him. I pray God you may say it and come off
+alive to tell us how he took it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We made our acknowledgments; and when I had bespoken good care for
+Tybee, we took leave of these stout fighters, and of old Ephraim as
+well, since the borderer was to serve as a guide for the over-mountain
+men, at least till they were come upon familiar ground to the westward.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas now hard upon ten of the clock in the forenoon, and we had our
+last sight of the brave little army whilst it was wending its way slowly
+down the slopes of King's Mountain. Of what became of it; how its weary
+march dragged on from day to day; how it was hampered by the train of
+captives, halted by rain-swollen torrents, and was well-nigh starved
+withal; of all these things you may read elsewhere. But now you must
+ride with Richard Jennifer and me, and our way lay to the eastward.</p>
+
+<p>All that Sunday we pressed forward, hasting as we could through the
+stark columned aisles of the autumn-stripped forest, and looking hourly
+to come upon Tarleton's legion marching out to Ferguson's relief.</p>
+
+<p>Since Richard Jennifer had ridden to the hounds in all this middle
+ground from boyhood, we were able to take my blind wanderings in reverse
+as the arrow flies; and by nightfall we were well down upon the main
+traveled road leading to Beattie's fording of the Catawba.</p>
+
+<p>As your map will show you, this was taking me somewhat out of my way to
+the northward; but it was Richard's most direct route to Salisbury and
+beyond, and by veering thus we made the surer of missing Colonel
+Tarleton, who, as we thought, would likely cross the river at the lower
+ford.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the high road we pushed on briskly for the river, nor did we
+draw rein until the sweating beasts were picking their way in the
+darkness down the last of the hills which sentinel the Catawba to the
+westward.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of this hill a by-road led to Macgowan's ford some six miles
+farther down the river, and here, as I supposed, our ways would lie
+apart. But when we came to the forking of the road, Richard pulled his
+mount into the by-path, clapping the spurs to the tired horse so that
+we were a good mile beyond the forking before I could overtake him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How now, lad?&quot; said I, when I had run him down. &quot;Would you take a
+fighting hazard when you need not? There is sure to be a British patrol
+at the lower ford.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He jerked his beast down to a walk and we rode in silence side by side
+for a full minute before he said gruffly: &quot;You'd never find the way
+alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;Barring myself, you are the clumsiest of evaders, Dick. I am
+on my own ground here, and that you know as well as I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn you!&quot; he gritted between his teeth. &quot;When we are coming near
+Appleby Hundred you are fierce enough to be rid of me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw his drift at that: how he would take all the chance of capture and
+a spy's rope for the sake of passing within a mile of Mistress Margery,
+or of the house he thought she was in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go back, Dick, whilst you may,&quot; said I. &quot;She is not at Appleby
+Hundred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned upon me like a lion at bay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What have you done with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Peace, you foolish boy. I am not her keeper. Her father took her to
+Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He reined up short in the narrow way. &quot;So?&quot; he said, most bitingly. &quot;And
+that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with
+the one to Gates. By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change r&ocirc;les here
+and now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing. Here was a man who
+had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling
+for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman
+might.</p>
+
+<p>And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say: &quot;You think I am
+standing in your way, Richard Jennifer? Well, so I am; for whilst I live
+you may not have her. Why don't you draw and cut me down?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On guard!&quot; he cried; &quot;draw and defend yourself!&quot; and with that the
+great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time
+to parry the descending blow. But at the balancing instant the
+brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the
+death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would,
+with her husband's blood upon his head.</p>
+
+<p>So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came
+down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees' hive buzzing
+in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side. My
+head was on Richard's knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his
+soaked kerchief.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLI_I_PLAYED_THE_HOST_AT_MY_OWN_FIRESIDE"></a><h2>XLI<br />HOW I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that
+the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke
+out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain
+me outright.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite,&quot; he would say. &quot;The devil
+whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse
+to thrust me out of the way. And when I saw you would not stir, 'twas
+too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade. Oh, God help me!
+I'll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me
+to hell again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said I; &quot;no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard. We are but
+two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us. But you
+need not fight me for it. The love is yours&mdash;not mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't say that, Jack; I'm selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is
+not. I know whereof I speak.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I denied, struggling to my feet; &quot;it has been yours from the
+first, Dick. I am but a sorry interloper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me
+stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the
+effects of the blow, he went on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say I know, and I do, Jack. She has refused me again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I groaned in spirit. I knew it must have come to that. Yet I would ask
+when and where.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas on our last day's riding,&quot; he went on; &quot;after we had had your
+note saying you would undertake a mission for Colonel Davie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took two steps and groped for the horse's bridle rein.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she tell you why she must refuse you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He helped me find the rein for my hand and the stirrup for my foot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was no 'why' but the one&mdash;she does not love me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I say she does, Dick; and I, too, know whereof I speak.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He flung me into the saddle as a strong man might toss a boy, and I
+understood how that saying of mine had gone into his blood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then there must be some barrier that I know not of,&quot; he said. Whereupon
+he put hand to head as one who tries to remember. &quot;Stay; did you not say
+there was a barrier, Jack?&mdash;when we were wrestling with death in the
+Indian fires? Or did I dream it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not dream it. But you were telling me what she said.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if
+my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she
+gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart
+would burst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was
+up and we were moving on. Then I would say: &quot;Truly, there is a barrier,
+Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once
+for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool
+and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you
+with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have
+her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood
+there is in the heart at such times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of
+the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning,
+saying, whilst we let the horses drink: &quot;'Tis patrolled on the other
+bank, you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was when I passed it a few days agone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk
+you need not take&mdash;to have me with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if
+there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for
+Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a
+second blade to see you safe through.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no
+doubt it will?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I
+should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the
+pinch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God!&quot; he swore, most feelingly, &quot;you are as true as the steel you
+carry, Jack Ireton!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said I, in honest shame; &quot;I do confess I was thinking less of my
+friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming
+peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I am recognized&mdash;yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the
+outpost need not betray me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now
+since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our
+history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you:
+namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a
+muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in
+mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on
+the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord
+Cornwallis got entangled some months later&mdash;but I must not anticipate.</p>
+
+<p>We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in
+the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of
+the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster,
+and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the
+steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that
+our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must
+make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long
+before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What for it, then?&quot; he asked, impatiently. &quot;My courage is freezing
+whilst we wait.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is nothing for it but to hold straight on across,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That we can not; 'twill be over the horses' ears. The beasts will drown
+themselves and us as well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How we should have argued it out I do not know, for just then Jennifer's
+horse, scenting the troop mounts on the farther shore, cocked tail and
+ears, let out a squealing neigh, and fell to curveting and plunging in a
+racket that might have stood for the splashings of an advancing army.</p>
+
+<p>In a twinkling the outpost camp was astir and a bellowing hail came to
+us across the water. Having no answer, the troopers began to let off
+their pieces haphazard in the darkness; and with the singing <i>zip</i> of
+the first musket ball, Richard went battle-mad, as he always did in the
+face of danger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At them!&quot; he thundered, clapping spurs to his jaded beast and whipping
+out the great claymore; and so we charged, the forlornest hope that ever
+fell upon an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>How we came ashore alive through the gun-fire is one of those mysteries
+to which every battle adds its quota; but the poor beasts we rode were
+not so lucky. Jennifer's horse went down while we were yet some yards
+from the bank; and mine fell a moment later. To face a score of waiting
+enemies afoot was too much for even Richard's rash courage; so when we
+were free of the struggling horses we promptly dove for shelter under
+the up-stream bank.</p>
+
+<p>Here the darkness stood our friend; and when the redcoat troopers came
+down to the river's edge with torches to see what had become of us, we
+took advantage of the noise they made and stole away up-stream till a
+shelving beach gave us leave to climb to the valley level above.</p>
+
+<p>Richard shook himself like a water-soaked spaniel and laughed grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to
+death,&quot; he commented. &quot;What next?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made him a bow. &quot;You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain
+Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm
+a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house
+and see what we can discover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He entered at once into the spirit of the jest, and together we trudged
+the scant mile through the stubble-fields to my old roof-tree. As you
+would guess, we looked to find the manor house turned into an outpost
+headquarters; but now we were desperate enough to face anything.</p>
+
+<p>Howbeit, not to rush blindly into the jaws of a trap, we first routed
+out the old black majordomo at the negro quarters; and when we learned
+from him that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and
+had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more;
+when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and
+grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's
+laying in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A toast!&quot; cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet
+with the glass held high. &quot;To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may
+she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another,
+Jack Ireton!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like
+two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one
+of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught
+whilst that first one lived.</p>
+
+<p>You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short
+hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress
+Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart
+the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting
+of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last
+loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for
+what must come&mdash;and so it did, though not as I prefigured.</p>
+
+<p>We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began
+to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned
+down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby
+Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and
+two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be
+Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the
+spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a
+mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.</p>
+
+<p>His last word to me was one of generous caution.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There
+will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and
+you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to
+betray you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust me,&quot; said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward,
+and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set
+abuzz in the small hours of the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLII_MY_LORD_HAS_HIS_MARCHING_ORDERS"></a><h2>XLII<br />IN WHICH MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in
+decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with
+nothing like the welcome at the outpost camp that a king's courier had a
+right to expect.</p>
+
+<p>The captain in command was not the one who had passed me out. He was a
+surly brute of the Yorkshire breed; and when he had heard that I was an
+express rider from Major Ferguson, he was pleased to demand my papers.</p>
+
+<p>To this I must needs make answer that I carried no written despatches;
+that my news was for the commander-in-chief's private ear. This I told
+my Yorkshire pig, demanding to be sent, under guard if he chose, to the
+headquarters in Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>But Captain Nobbut would hear to no such reasonable proposal. On the
+contrary, he would hold me in arrest till he could report me and have
+instructions from his colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing what a stake it was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in
+durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper
+who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of
+Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed
+with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling
+back with an order to set me forthwith upon the road to headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>Once free of the camp of detention you may be sure I put Blackstar to
+his best paces; but hasten as I would it was coming on to evening when I
+passed the inner safety line and galloped down the high street of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>As luck would have it, the first familiar face I saw was that of Charles
+Stedman, the commissary-general. On my inquiry he directed me straight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My Lord is at supper at Mr. Stair's. Have you news, Captain?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I drew breath of relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the
+bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying
+that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None
+the less, if the commissary-general were pleased to come with me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He took the hint at once; and he it was who procured me instant
+admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of
+breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my
+Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor
+of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great
+silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well
+filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military
+family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as
+befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.</p>
+
+<p>At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's
+sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's
+radiant beauty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do, my Lord.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new
+loyalist levies, I hope?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord,&quot; I
+said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it
+had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded
+on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse
+alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have
+been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but
+above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot
+where my lady sat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is this, sir?&mdash;explain yourself!&quot; thundered my Lord, forgetting
+for once his mild suavity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the
+telling,&quot; I replied. &quot;I came upon the major some miles this side of the
+crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with
+his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight,
+he obeyed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My command?&mdash;but I gave him no such order!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, truly, you did not&mdash;neither in the original nor in the duplicate,
+my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the
+duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our
+purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made
+his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord
+quelled the fierce outburst with a word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this
+traitor,&quot; he said. And then to me: &quot;Go on, sir, if you please; there has
+been a battle, as I take it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of
+the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or
+dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the
+field was a prisoner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the
+little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking
+momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton,&quot; he said.
+&quot;You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make
+it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your
+submission to me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you have been a rebel from the first?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have, my Lord&mdash;since the day nine years agone when I learned that
+your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the
+western mountains?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of
+powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others
+followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to
+report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do so hope and trust, my Lord.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell
+upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to
+break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for,
+bent like a withe and would not snap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put this spy in irons and clear the room,&quot; he ordered sharply. And
+this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to
+the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two
+sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word
+which should efface me.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLIII_I_DRINK_A_DISH_OF_TEA"></a><h2>XLIII<br />IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant
+bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs
+where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted
+guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.</p>
+
+<p>The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the
+door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had
+hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the
+consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a
+pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.</p>
+
+<p>I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who
+was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started
+up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the
+mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a
+candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them
+down.</p>
+
+<p>I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering
+that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my
+latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank
+gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs&mdash;which, by the by, were
+strangely bitter.</p>
+
+<p>I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came
+again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make
+no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my
+tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting
+sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the
+oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through
+that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then
+I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis,
+that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof
+windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were
+throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.</p>
+
+<p>Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel,
+I sprang up quickly&mdash;and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the
+pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the
+headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman
+in his first gale at sea.</p>
+
+<p>The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a
+sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the
+cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage
+of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill,
+fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen.
+I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too
+petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had
+bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a
+Turkish cursing&mdash;the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants
+the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that
+the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps
+tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and
+tender asked: &quot;Are you awake, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with
+the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid
+enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that
+I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Merci, Monsieur</i>,&quot; she said, icily. And then: &quot;Gratitude does not seem
+to be amongst your gifts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful
+for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some
+one must needs spoil me of that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Selfish&mdash;selfish always and to the last,&quot; she murmured. &quot;Do you never
+give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was past all endurance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I had not, should I be here this moment?&quot; I raved. &quot;You do make me
+sicker than I was, my lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet I say you are selfish,&quot; she insisted. &quot;What have I done that you
+should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us have plain speech, in God's name,&quot; I retorted. &quot;You know well
+enough there was no better way in which I could serve you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do I, indeed, <i>mon ami</i>?&quot; she flashed out. &quot;Let me tell you, sir, had
+she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair&mdash;or Margery Ireton, if
+you like that better&mdash;would kill you with her own hand rather than have
+it said her husband died upon a gallows!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God in Heaven!&quot; I gasped; &quot;'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned
+me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you
+are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you do not deny it!&quot; I cried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die
+shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice
+in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord!&quot; I groaned; &quot;are you a woman, or a fiend?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I
+said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by
+inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are
+having your revenge of me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Merci, encore.</i> Shall I go away and leave you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not that.&quot; A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish
+horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I
+added: &quot;But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing
+me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my
+throbbing temples.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Monsieur John!&quot; she said softly; &quot;I meant not to make you suffer
+more, but rather less.&quot; Then she found water and a napkin to wring out
+and bind upon my aching head.</p>
+
+<p>At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the
+love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she
+had brought me to this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, that is better&mdash;better,&quot; I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my
+temples gave me some surcease of the agony.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you forgive me?&quot; she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I
+could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is none so much to forgive,&quot; I replied. &quot;One hopeless day last
+summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you&mdash;in common justice you
+have the right to do what you will with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing
+sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you
+than for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it,&quot; said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must
+grind upon her. &quot;But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps
+in to break the bond.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as
+heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me
+see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out
+who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt
+more like a man and less like a baited bear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is better,&quot; said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. &quot;I bear my
+Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of
+a man who was never minded to run away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you are going to run away,&quot; she said, decisively; &quot;and that as
+soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I
+bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not
+poison you this time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stay,&quot; I cried. &quot;You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a
+needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can
+find me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; you are a soldier, and&mdash;and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you
+hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the
+battle-field.&quot; And with that she left me.</p>
+
+<p>I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned
+to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit,
+Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my
+nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly
+from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the
+English.</p>
+
+<p>And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer
+any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on
+beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me
+how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over
+me in her father's strong-room below stairs. &quot;That is Scipio's secret,&quot;
+she would say, laughing at me, &quot;and he shall keep it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I
+learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis
+had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army
+would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, thanks be to God!&quot; I said, most fervently. &quot;King's Mountain has
+begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he
+had not guessed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True,&quot; said I; &quot;I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in
+all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the
+blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!&quot; she burst
+out. And then, all in the same breath: &quot;But you will be rid of me
+presently, for good and all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning
+for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Mon Dieu!</i>&quot; she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; &quot;I am sick to
+death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling
+us both, Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you
+kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open&mdash;if you will but
+drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes&mdash;a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!&quot; This with another
+lip-curl of scorn. &quot;I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir,
+if you have not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well
+enough to hang.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before,
+you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I closed my eyes in very weariness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are hard to please, my lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away&mdash;to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Going away?&quot; I echoed. &quot;Whither, if I may ask?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As
+Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and
+in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the
+last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stay a moment,&quot; I begged. &quot;You are leaving the untangling of this coil
+you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought
+that the Church can undo what the Church has done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all
+else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end,&quot; she scoffed;
+then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face
+in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.</p>
+
+<p>I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing
+nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the
+wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLIV_WE_COME_TO_THE_BEGINNING_OF_THE_END"></a><h2>XLIV<br />HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at
+the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot
+Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to
+listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order
+announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's
+headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the
+Carolinas.</p>
+
+<p>As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer
+and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander;
+and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene,
+the &quot;Hickory Quaker.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general
+to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that
+you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first
+inspection of Horatio Gates's poor &quot;shadow of an army&quot; on that dismal
+December day in Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man,
+pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his
+waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse
+more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and
+arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.</p>
+
+<p>The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his
+face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose
+and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet
+there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful
+and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of
+openness that a dark man is like to miss.</p>
+
+<p>A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my
+summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more
+prophetic eye.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at
+the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our
+colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way&mdash;a heat at a time, and a blow
+at a time,&quot; said Jennifer; and I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line
+rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and
+choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his
+men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field,
+in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with
+fringings of the same&mdash;a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no
+tailor-fine coat could have set it off.</p>
+
+<p>When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater
+pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath,
+that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the
+Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed
+the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in
+open defiance of all discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the
+&quot;Lion-bearder,&quot; as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even
+as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways
+and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but
+psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other
+Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel
+the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse,
+out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.</p>
+
+<p>Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of
+light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and
+file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, &quot;the
+Marcellus of the army,&quot; has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the
+luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For
+surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler
+patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was
+our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.</p>
+
+<p>But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing
+restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of
+Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop
+to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you
+turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this
+tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.</p>
+
+<p>As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of
+door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British
+gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.</p>
+
+<p>Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my
+dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British
+general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good
+fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's
+command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.</p>
+
+<p>Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of
+action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's
+company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his
+stirrup and share his hazards.</p>
+
+<p>Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks
+preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to
+take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the
+gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages
+of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale,
+and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the
+dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and
+outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who
+was enamored of death.</p>
+
+<p>As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither
+better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the
+skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or
+that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at
+me day and night.</p>
+
+<p>Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I
+was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days
+lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for
+the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the
+more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at
+each remembrance of the hand that gave them.</p>
+
+<p>One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we
+were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the
+half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the
+caretaker of the deserted town house.</p>
+
+<p>As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and
+the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation
+I had put upon my dear lady. &quot;Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra
+massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de
+house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night;
+yes, sar!&quot; And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into
+another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen
+woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made
+her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late
+surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking
+to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her
+to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.</p>
+
+<p>I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do
+think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these
+tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving
+because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.
+For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which
+would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of
+the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire
+to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate
+should open for me.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her&mdash;the desire and another
+thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come,
+and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut
+into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at
+Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with
+Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of
+my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.</p>
+
+<p>As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate,
+drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and
+outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of
+them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As
+I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now
+waiting to sprout and grow.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the
+British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had
+my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.</p>
+
+<p>Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without
+telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive
+me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I
+woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian
+scalping-knife thrust through it.</p>
+
+<p>Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most
+palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it.&quot; Then, most surlily:
+&quot;'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he
+would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the
+point.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Monsieur:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had
+done. I have spoken to the good P&egrave;re Matthieu, and he has consented to
+write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he should
+have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own seeking, mayhap
+you can devise a way to communicate with P&egrave;re Matthieu, who is at
+present with us under our borrowed roof here.&quot;</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through
+twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a mere formal matter of business,&quot; said I, when I could put him
+off no longer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Business?&quot; he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in
+his eye. &quot;What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis about&mdash;it touches the title to Appleby Hundred,&quot; said I,
+equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. &quot;Of course
+you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress
+re-established my right and title to the estate?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said he; &quot;you never told me.&quot; Then: &quot;She writes you about this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About a matter touching it, as I say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you did not say,&quot; he growled; after which a silence came and sat
+between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily
+at the back of it.</p>
+
+<p>When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying.
+He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but
+half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is altogether as it may happen,&quot; I retorted, striving hard to keep
+down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled
+in me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that
+you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well? And if I do chance to see her&mdash;what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis your own folly,&quot; I rejoined hotly. &quot;You should blame neither the
+lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Save what?&quot; he broke in savagely.</p>
+
+<p>I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of
+waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us
+have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go
+with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the
+spying.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said he; &quot;not while you stand it upon such a leg as that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. &quot;Shall we never have
+the better of these senseless vaporings?&quot; I cried. &quot;'Tis as you say; I
+can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick,
+and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her
+will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine.
+Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show
+you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and
+mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for
+Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the
+year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLV_WE_FIND_WHAT_WE_NEVER_SOUGHT"></a><h2>XLV<br />IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the
+Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between
+that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and
+I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise,
+cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which
+we had at the house of one Philbrick&mdash;as hot a Tory as we pretended to
+be.</p>
+
+<p>From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British
+outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were
+rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General
+Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would
+presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Cornwallis lost his wits?&quot; Dick would say, when we were a-jog on
+the southward road again. &quot;'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit
+for being&mdash;if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him
+and cut him off from his line and base.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens
+that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be
+true, we have heard only the half of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the other half will be?&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one
+or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: &quot;'Twill
+be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the
+Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Right you are,&quot; said I. &quot;And now we know what we have to discover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anan?&quot; he queried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan,
+and when.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That should be easy&mdash;if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us
+at a rope's end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work
+together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must
+pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of
+the road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good,&quot; said he; and then his jaw dropped. &quot;But what if one of us be
+taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it
+before we go a step farther, if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis out of all reason,&quot; he demurred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant
+venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing
+most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty
+higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John
+Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal
+jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me,&quot; he grumbled. &quot;The risk is
+chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to
+God knows how many more of them, and belike&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen
+galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put
+sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a
+loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit
+Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from &quot;hornets'-nest&quot; Mecklenburg, also
+bent upon revenge.</p>
+
+<p>The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But
+we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog
+himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely
+through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight
+of our goal.</p>
+
+<p>Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared
+less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the
+village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and
+measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord
+Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen
+it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business
+of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack&mdash;I'm new to
+this game&mdash;what's to do first when we are among them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed at him. &quot;You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis
+for you to make the dispositions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as
+travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself,&quot; I replied; and
+this is what we did.</p>
+
+<p>The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted
+over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was
+a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing
+soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard
+and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner,
+with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment
+as the hostelry afforded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what luck?&quot; asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he
+might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. &quot;Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal
+telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel
+to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp
+confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if
+I heard the name aright.&quot; Then I added: &quot;This rabble is too drunken to
+serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn
+nothing here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was at least one who was not a ranker,&quot; said Dick, and there was
+something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to
+whisper. &quot;Jack, I've fair had a fright!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's
+weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may grin as you please,&quot; he went on; &quot;but answer me this; do the
+dead come back to life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the
+dominies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I have seen a ghost&mdash;a most horrible mask of a man we both know to
+our cost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man
+himself the fire hath left,&quot; said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the
+word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell you yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into
+the chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take
+precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I
+have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live&mdash;as he
+is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will kill him as I would a wild beast,&quot; I raged, thinking of that
+midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her
+knees to this fiend in human guise. &quot;And so should you,&quot; I added, &quot;if
+you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw
+farthest and clearest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All in good time,&quot; he said, coolly. &quot;At this present we have Dan
+Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a
+supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits
+at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods!
+but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the
+sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This
+reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly.
+What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he
+might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless
+kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance,
+how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we
+both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back
+to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make
+shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The devil!&quot; quoth Dick, &quot;I venture that's easier said than done&mdash;for
+two plain country gentlemen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the
+throng be great enough, we may pass current in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish
+me outright.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded
+hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the
+camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as
+large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within,
+lights and music and sounds of revelry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of
+substance,&quot; says Dick. And then: &quot;Can you pick out a good horse in the
+dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these
+cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the
+hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a
+sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and
+passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLVI_OUR_PIECE_MISSED_FIRE_AT_HARNDON_ACRES"></a><h2>XLVI<br />HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a
+sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us
+into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus
+early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.</p>
+
+<p>As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling
+jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes,
+neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina
+plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of
+the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our
+American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on
+their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering
+silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled <i>coiffures</i>, paint, patches and
+powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.</p>
+
+<p>Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to
+have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke
+Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and
+tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an
+agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went
+apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the
+assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without
+ruffling it.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp
+for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in
+the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting
+figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and
+prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify
+this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or
+bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own
+self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no
+more gentlemanly welcome than I.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged
+away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a
+curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the
+silly persiflage of the belles and beaux&mdash;a word here and another
+there&mdash;and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look
+for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me
+a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in
+one and the same instant of time.</p>
+
+<p>I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less
+crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room
+serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots
+of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of
+redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the
+viands on the great oaken table in the midst.</p>
+
+<p>Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some
+quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting
+for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate
+lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.</p>
+
+<p>The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white
+shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to
+disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of
+apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease
+with&mdash;good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton
+for her company!</p>
+
+<p>Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the
+thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it
+out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady
+give a little start and a shriek.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!&quot; she cried. Then, without a
+tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me:
+&quot;Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia.&quot; And
+next to Dick: &quot;Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had
+known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face
+sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part
+with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly,
+and to say: &quot;I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with
+me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress
+Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the
+colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black
+eyes of him boring into my very soul.</p>
+
+<p>Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have
+come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned
+into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the
+ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid
+the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?&quot; she
+said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then
+she dipped us a curtsy. &quot;<i>Au revoir</i>, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities
+you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to
+grace you here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with
+me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel
+bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had
+myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between
+and introduced us as sweetly as you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless,&quot; said I, &quot;the colonel recognized us both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! Think you so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly
+or not at all. What have you overheard?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He swore softly. &quot;Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest
+to Dan Morgan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about
+to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of
+an hour at the outer door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a
+slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue
+when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: &quot;Will it
+be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr.
+Thornicroft?&quot; But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off
+cleverly, leaving his fair questioner&mdash;and me&mdash;none the wiser.</p>
+
+<p>I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set
+purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments
+were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was
+done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me
+where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she
+would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner
+in the dance.</p>
+
+<p>The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter
+was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her
+kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I
+bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had
+learned to know and love whispered in my ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech
+with you,&quot; it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no
+more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another
+epauletted dangler.</p>
+
+<p>She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing
+welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that
+made me wince.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What folly is this, sir?&quot; she demanded. &quot;Will you never have done
+taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand
+sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am but come to do your bidding,&quot; I said, slowly, for the words cost
+me sorely in the coin of anguish. &quot;I had your letter, and if you will
+say how I may find Father Matthieu&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She broke me in the midst. &quot;<i>Mon Dieu!</i>&quot; she cried. &quot;Could I guess that
+you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do
+heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a
+falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the
+king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and
+tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!&quot; And with this
+she put her face in her hands and began to sob.</p>
+
+<p>Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the
+hazard we took&mdash;a hazard involving her as well as Richard and
+myself&mdash;steadied me with a sudden shock.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Control yourself,&quot; I whispered. &quot;What is done, is done; and the misery
+is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I
+will do my errand and begone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can not stay to find him now&mdash;you must not,&quot; she insisted, coming
+out of the fit of despair with a rebound. &quot;He is in the town&mdash;indeed, I
+know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer,
+Captain Ireton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I, sullenly. &quot;I have been living a lie all these months to
+the friend I love best, and I will not do it more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes
+that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the
+voice that said: &quot;Then Dick does not know?&mdash;you have not told him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; I have told no one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Dick!&quot; she said softly. &quot;I thought he knew, and I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my
+dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing
+she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been
+able to right him thus far.</p>
+
+<p>After a time she said: &quot;Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?
+Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know
+you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier
+penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I
+was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet,&quot; I rejoined, striving
+hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. &quot;At the moment it
+seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to
+Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw
+the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's
+factor for the witnesses?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know what it was?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in
+which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby
+Hundred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Appleby Hundred?&quot; she echoed. &quot;But my father&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others,
+has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is
+my dear friend, and you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I begin to understand&mdash;a little,&quot; she said, and now her voice was low
+and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: &quot;But now&mdash;now
+you would be free again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's
+most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman?
+that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the
+taking of it may involve you and Richard?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, surely,&quot; she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her
+eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. &quot;Did you
+come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur
+John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my
+leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information
+of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any
+case&mdash;wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To tell me this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall
+be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mind them not; I had forgotten them,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me,
+Margery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did I not say I had forgotten it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. &quot;Now one
+thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful
+thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I
+have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your
+dressing-room&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Spare me, sir,&quot; she begged. &quot;There are some things that must always be
+unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you
+to know&mdash;that I know&mdash;how&mdash;how you came there&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But
+having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into
+words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What
+could he hope to gain by such a thing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue.
+For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert
+Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave
+the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's
+dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing
+begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit,
+I made haste to efface the question I had asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out
+of sight. But to the other&mdash;the matter which has brought me hither; will
+you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers,
+warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our
+poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not
+linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward&mdash;Oh,
+heavens! what have I said!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing,&quot; I cut in swiftly; &quot;you are speaking now to your husband&mdash;not
+to the spy. Go on, if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you
+are still&mdash;if you desire it, you may meet the good <i>cur&eacute;</i>, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim
+her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step
+below, I whispered: &quot;I shall keep the tryst&mdash;my first and last with you,
+dear lady. Adieu.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I
+feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He
+was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again,
+through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed
+with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of
+the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking
+this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; I asked, when she had found me out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the worst that could happen,&quot; she whispered. &quot;You are discovered,
+both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be
+known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and
+now&mdash;Hark! what is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or
+two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on
+greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.</p>
+
+<p>I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come
+to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. &quot;We must find
+Dick,&quot; said I. &quot;Have you seen him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was
+not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in
+here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it
+to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain
+for Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!&quot; Her voice was
+tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in
+spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.</p>
+
+<p>But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that
+Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you,
+my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another
+slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in
+guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning
+was not needed.</p>
+
+<p>Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. &quot;That man! Oh,
+Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we
+are not finding Dick&mdash;we <i>must</i> find him quickly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the
+door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the
+way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not
+before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the
+chance offered, I bent to whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may
+not pass the door, as you have seen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will not escape without you,&quot; she demurred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think
+of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, 'tis hard, hard!&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>I snatched the word from her lips. &quot;To choose between love and wifely
+duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the
+ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn.
+Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were
+summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the
+casement.</p>
+
+<p>Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing
+restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of
+the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not
+guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying
+venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of
+British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name
+whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and
+the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my
+window.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis I&mdash;Dick Jennifer,&quot; whispered the voice without. &quot;Swing the
+casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's
+sake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am fair trapped,&quot; I whispered back. &quot;Make off as you can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And leave you behind?&quot; So much I heard; and then came sounds of a
+struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold,
+a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed
+by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The
+edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the
+casement a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the name of the king!&quot; he said; and this was all he had time or
+leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of
+his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil
+of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and
+clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for
+yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The alighting ground of the leap was the body of Dick's late antagonist
+lying prone beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and
+ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis legs for it now,&quot; he cried. &quot;Make for the avenue and the horses at
+the hitch-rail!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may
+still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So
+when we had darted through the thin line of encircling horsemen and were
+flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight
+of us thundering at our heels, Dick was the pace-setter, whilst I made
+but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in
+the effort to catch my second wind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Courage!&quot; shouted Dick, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he
+ran. &quot;There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the
+box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the
+border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that
+I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now,
+then; give it to 'em hot <i>and</i> heavy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some
+confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail,
+and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the
+avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse
+he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward
+road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in
+full cry behind us.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a
+by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that
+were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who
+had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd
+say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off
+one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if
+so be ye blow it fierce enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas cut and dried beforehand,&quot; Dick explained. &quot;I had an inkling of
+what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped
+from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his
+one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So,&quot; said I. &quot;Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with
+never a word to take back to Dan Morgan&mdash;unless you have the word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not I,&quot; Dick said, ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>The old man chuckled again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right
+old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel
+Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part
+o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp
+to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis 'll
+foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLVII_ARMS_AND_THE_MAN"></a><h2>XLVII<br />ARMS AND THE MAN</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>In that book he wrote&mdash;the book in which he never so much as names the
+name of Ireton&mdash;my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles
+Stedman, damns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his
+ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the
+failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the
+South.</p>
+
+<p>Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre
+Tarleton,&mdash;they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a
+major-general's sword-knot,&mdash;'tis but the part of outspoken honest
+enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness
+on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the
+most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord
+Cornwallis's field officers.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy.
+'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and
+won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.</p>
+
+<p>In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's
+and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements
+fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with
+his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers
+exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired
+for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within
+scouting distance of us.</p>
+
+<p>Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at
+the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and
+John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper
+into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by
+this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell
+back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post
+on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.</p>
+
+<p>For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland
+line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were
+posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A
+hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open
+pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians
+and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and
+every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.</p>
+
+<p>Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of
+outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the
+Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted
+well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own
+colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the
+enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was
+better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we
+all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us
+to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the
+harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim
+low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure
+killing distance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a brave old Daniel,&quot; said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the
+air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. &quot;'Twill not be his fault
+if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack;
+what think you of our chances?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the
+British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to
+anybody's anvil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact,&quot; said I. &quot;We have
+Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first,
+and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good
+account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them
+leg-stiff to overtake us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan
+Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with
+a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can
+take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day
+last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of
+misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a
+look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless
+branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful
+setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war
+portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with
+the lad's when I gave him his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no
+other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go
+hand in hand with repentance and confession&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no;&quot; he cut in quickly. &quot;Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may
+be all too late&mdash;for me. Does she love you?&mdash;has she said she loves
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the
+chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the
+honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that
+content you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the
+dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you,
+Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me
+the burying trench.&quot; And then he added softly: &quot;God bless her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on
+to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of
+galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers,
+one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to
+reconnoitre us most coolly.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his
+borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous
+cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to
+cover.</p>
+
+<p>Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. &quot;The
+fumblers!&quot; he raged. &quot;'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all
+missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will have another chance, and that speedily,&quot; I ventured; and,
+truly, the chance did not tarry.</p>
+
+<p>From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming
+under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon
+were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the
+opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the
+volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun
+was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level
+rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of
+red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord!&quot; says Richard; &quot;if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of
+that&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing
+as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the
+onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the
+militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's
+were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting
+line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That fetches it to us,&quot; said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore
+when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave
+of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a
+hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around
+the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half
+prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood
+firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
+But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the
+iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way
+backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here come their reserves,&quot; said Dick, pointing with his blade to a
+second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. &quot;Lord! shall
+we never get into it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first
+company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a
+rout. The order was misunderstood,&mdash;'twas received at the precise moment
+of the upcoming of the British reserves,&mdash;and the Marylanders fell back.
+In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of
+the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing
+the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in
+the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy,
+sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give the <i>coup de
+gr&acirc;ce</i>, he gave the quick command: &quot;About face! Fire! Charge!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length
+range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw
+the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the
+recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. &quot;Charge them,
+lads! they're sabering the Georgians!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was
+at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went,
+with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the
+troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other
+curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages&mdash;the heavy
+dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled
+from catapults.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless
+confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this
+brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler&mdash;figuring in the
+histories as an unnamed sergeant&mdash;had his share.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton&mdash;a true Briton
+in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the
+retreat&mdash;was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons.
+Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great
+clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three
+horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel
+Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler,
+and my own mount.</p>
+
+<p>When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and
+was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer
+the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man
+nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front
+whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut
+him down.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the
+unnamed &quot;sergeant,&quot; as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor
+the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled
+his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellow <i>sabreur</i> drop his
+weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long
+enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of
+his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were
+now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain
+our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a
+savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found
+his antagonist's sword hand.</p>
+
+<p>At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,&mdash;it hangs now over the
+chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,&mdash;gave the
+signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse,
+wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from
+his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so
+we did not come off scatheless.</p>
+
+<p>This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a
+little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no
+serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down
+the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to
+the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.</p>
+
+<p>The battle fought and won,&mdash;'twas over and done with two full hours
+before noon,&mdash;Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the
+swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away,
+and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on
+Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little
+army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest
+running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before
+Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the
+victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the
+warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it,
+burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready
+for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.</p>
+
+<p>'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our
+cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the
+cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of
+the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed
+to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and
+stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's
+outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we
+saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the
+main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary,
+mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the
+hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.</p>
+
+<p>Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I
+promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions.
+Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the
+general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to
+Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in
+which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with
+Morgan at the upper fords.</p>
+
+<p>Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in
+the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of
+January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and
+found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners,
+and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank
+of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel.
+'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us
+leave to rest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have had weary work of it, I doubt not, gentlemen,&quot; he would say.
+&quot;Your time is your own until General Greene sets us in order for what he
+has in mind to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Dick, and he looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May we count upon twenty-four hours, think you, Colonel?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Safely, I should say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I shall ask leave of absence for Captain Jennifer and myself till
+this time to-morrow,&quot; I went on. &quot;This is our home neighborhood, as you
+know, and we have a little matter of private business which may be
+despatched in a day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will this business take you without the lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is as it may be, sir. I do not know the bounds of the outposting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colonel wrote us passes to come and go at will past the sentries,
+and I drew Dick away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it, Jack?&quot; he asked, when we were by ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the fulfilling of my promise to you, Richard. Get your horse and
+we will ride together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But whither?&quot; he queried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Appleby Hundred&mdash;and Mistress Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLVIII_WE_KEPT_TRYST_AT_APPLEBY"></a><h2>XLVIII<br />HOW WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY HUNDRED</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Twas late in the afternoon of the last day of January when we set out
+together, Jennifer and I, from the camp of conference at Sherrard's
+Ford.</p>
+
+<p>The military situation, lately so critical for us, had reached and
+passed one of its many subclimaxes. Morgan's little army, with its
+prisoners still safe in hand, was on its way northward to
+Charlottesville in Virginia, and only the officers remained behind to
+confer with General Greene.</p>
+
+<p>For the others, Huger and Williams were hurrying up from Cheraw to meet
+the general at Salisbury; and General Davidson, with a regiment of North
+Carolina volunteers, was set to keep the fords of the Catawba.</p>
+
+<p>As for the British commander's intendings, we had conflicting reports.
+Two days earlier, Lord Cornwallis had burned his heavy baggage at
+Ramsour's Mill, and so we had assurance that the pursuit was only
+delayed. But whether, when he should break his camp at Forney's
+plantation, he would go northward after Morgan and the prisoners, or
+cross the river at some nearhand ford to chase our main, none of our
+scouts could tell us.</p>
+
+<p>We were guessing at this, Richard and I, as we jogged on together down
+the river road, and were agreed that could my Lord cross the flooded
+river without loss of time, his better chance would be to fall upon our
+main at Salisbury or thereabouts. But as to the possibility of his
+crossing, we fell apart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lacking another drop of rain, we are safe for forty-eight hours yet,&quot;
+Dick would say, pointing to the brimming river rolling its brown flood
+at our right as we fared on. &quot;And with two days' start we shall have him
+burning more than his camp wagons to overtake us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have it so, if you will,&quot; said I, to end the argument. &quot;But this I
+know: were Dan Morgan or General Greene, or you or I, in Lord
+Cornwallis's shoes, the two days would not be lost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer laughed. &quot;Leave the rest of us out, Sir Hannibal Ireton, and
+tell what you would do,&quot; he said, mocking me.</p>
+
+<p>We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had
+sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when
+we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis
+Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I
+pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out
+in gurgling eddies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been sharp to take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but
+there is one I've not forgot,&quot; said I. &quot;One day, about the time you were
+getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a
+company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the
+Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in
+flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see
+that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no more than armpit
+deep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&quot; said Richard; &quot;then it behooves us to&mdash;&quot; He stopped in mid
+sentence, drew rein and shifted his sword hilt to the front.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>For reply he pointed me to a canoe half hidden in the bushes where
+roadside and river-edge came together.</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;An empty pirogue. Shall we charge and run it through?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hist!&quot; said he; &quot;that canoe was afloat a minute since. Mark the
+paddle&mdash;'tis dripping yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke an Indian stood up in the bushes beside the pirogue, holding
+out his empty hands in token of amity. We rode up and were presently
+shaking hands with our old-time ally, the Catawba.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How!&quot; said he; &quot;heap how! Chief Harris glad; wah! Make think have to go
+to Sal'bury to find Captain Long-knife and Captain Jennif'. Heap much
+glad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chief Harris?&quot; I queried. &quot;Who may he be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba drew himself up and drummed upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chief Harris here,&quot; he answered, proudly. &quot;The Great War Chief,&quot; by
+which we understood he meant General Greene, &quot;say all Catawba take
+war-path 'gainst redcoat; make Uncanoola headman; give um new name.
+Wah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this we shook hands with him again, well pleased that our stanch ally
+should have recognition at the hands of the general. Then I would ask if
+he were on the way to raise his tribesmen to fight with us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bimeby; no have time now; big thing over yonder,&quot; pointing across the
+river. &quot;Manitou Cornwally fool Great War Chief, mebbe, hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is that?&quot; said Dick; and the query elicited a bit of news to make
+us prick our ears. The Catawba had been in the British camp at Forney's,
+posturing again as a Cherokee friendly to the king's side. Some sudden
+movement had been determined upon, though what it was to be he could not
+learn. At the end of his own resources he had crossed the river in a
+stolen pirogue to find and warn us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What say you, Dick?&quot; I asked, when we had heard the Catawba through.</p>
+
+<p>The lad was holding his lip in his hand and scowling as one who pits
+duty against inclination.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis our cursed luck!&quot; he gloomed. Then he swore it out by length and
+breadth, and, when the air was cleared, let me have what was in his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After all, 'tis like enough we should find Appleby house deserted.
+Gilbert Stair will cling to Lord Cornwallis's coat-skirt as long as he
+can for sheer safety's sake. At all events, our business must wait; the
+country's weal comes first.&quot; Then to the Indian: &quot;If we can make the
+beasts take the water, will you ferry us across, Chief?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Catawba nodded, and made the nod good by setting us dry-shod on the
+farther bank of the brown flood. By the time we had the horses rubbed
+down and resaddled 'twas twilight in the open and night dark in the
+wood; but we were on our own ground and knew every by-path through the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>So, when we had sent the Indian back to carry news of us to General
+Davidson at the lower ford, and to advertise him of our purpose, we
+mounted to begin a scouting jaunt, keeping to the wood paths and bearing
+cautiously northward toward the enemy's camp at Forney's plantation.</p>
+
+<p>At times we were close upon the British sentries, with every nerve
+strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours
+through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with
+the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as
+noiseless as a cat's.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, in the fullness of time&mdash;'twas near about midnight as we
+guessed it&mdash;we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines
+of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon
+there was the stir of an army making ready for the march.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which way will it be, north or south?&quot; whispered Dick, when we had
+dismounted to cloak the heads of the horses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall know shortly,&quot; said I; and truly, we did, being well-nigh
+enveloped and ridden down by the fringe of light-horse deploying to
+pioneer the way. When we had sheered off to let this skirmish cloud blow
+by, Dick struck a spark into his tinder-box to have a sight of his
+compass needle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;South and by east,&quot; he announced; &quot;that will mean Beattie's Ford, I
+take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not unless they swim, horse and foot,&quot; I objected. &quot;'Twill be
+Macgowan's, more likely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having this uncertainty to resolve, we must hang upon the skirts of the
+British advance till we could make sure, and this proved to be a most
+perilous business. Yet by riding abreast of the moving main we did
+resolve the uncertainty; heard the orders passed from man to man, and
+later saw a small feinting detachment split off to take the road for
+Beattie's, whilst the main body held on for Macgowan's; all this before
+we were discovered in the gloaming of the dawn by some of Tarleton's
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to
+take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our
+wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close
+upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat
+riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's
+heels.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand.
+We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and
+lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should
+have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the
+missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on
+the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol
+bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air.
+Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther
+bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across
+in time to give the alarum.</p>
+
+<p>As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river
+when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned
+out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the
+river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there
+were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to
+dispute the passage of an army.</p>
+
+<p>What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February
+first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not
+any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of
+patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one
+outnumbering host in check.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by
+the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding
+shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on
+the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for
+swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and
+always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not
+blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of
+bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and
+the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy
+squarely.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire;
+and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that
+back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading
+redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke
+here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a
+battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.</p>
+
+<p>Having no firearms save our wetted pistols, Jennifer and I crouched in
+cover, waiting to do what two swordsmen might when the blade's length
+should bridge the fast-narrowing distance between us and the advancing
+host.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas in this little interval of forced inaction that we heard a most
+familiar voice issuing from a clump of holly just below our covert; a
+voice lifted now in fervent prayer and again in Scriptural anathema on
+the foe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Let God arise and let His inimies be scattered.... Let them be as the
+chaff upon a threshing-floor'&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle filled the momentary pause,
+and a British officer in a colonel's uniform swayed drunkenly in his
+saddle and plunged headlong in the stream.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Let them be as the children of Amalek before the Mighty One of Israel:
+make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, make all their
+princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna.... O my God, make them like unto a
+wheel, and as the stubble before the wind; like as the fire that burneth
+up the wood, and as the flame that consumeth the mountains.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Crack! went the long-barreled piece again, and again an officer
+hallooing on his floundering battalion bent to his saddle horn and
+slipped into the turbid flood.</p>
+
+<p>My gorge rose. This picking off of officers has always seemed to me the
+savagest of war's barbarities. How Richard divined my thought and
+purpose, I know not; but when I would have slipped down to Yeates's
+holly bush he laid a detaining hand on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let be,&quot; he said; &quot;'tis murder, if you like, but all war is that. When
+old Eph's turn comes, they will kill him as relentlessly as he is
+killing them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the
+shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham's men,
+and the king's muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by
+platoon and volley fire. Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view
+of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the Lord Harry!&quot; he cried, &quot;'tis high time Joe Graham was getting
+his lads in order for a foot race. Once those fellows come ashore
+they'll play hare and hounds with us to the king's taste. Keep your eye
+on the nags, Jack. It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a
+belated retreat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be
+out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank. As I looked to make
+sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of
+hoofs on the Appleby road. I made sure this would be General Davidson
+bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late.
+O'Hara's men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying
+his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree
+fringe sing with musket balls.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis our cue to run away!&quot; Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet. &quot;To
+the horses!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now we were too late. Davidson's men were between us and the scrub
+oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.</p>
+
+<p>Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a
+tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now
+dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift
+parrying musket-balls.</p>
+
+<p>What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering
+heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered
+Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the
+retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst
+he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the
+galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after
+them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Up with you and out of this!&quot; cried Jennifer, setting me the example.
+&quot;We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his
+holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting
+his terrible imprecations on the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old
+man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to
+his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain
+regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer
+shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself,
+cheering his men on to the attack.</p>
+
+<p>We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire,
+the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British
+commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the
+entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.</p>
+
+<p>The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath. &quot;Dad blast ye for a pair
+of aim-sp'ilin'&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote
+through the branches overhead. A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I
+stooped to recover it. When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man
+tightly in his arms. Yeates's belt was cut, and a little oozing
+well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ease me down, Cap'n Dick; ease me down. The old man's done for, this
+time, ez I allow&mdash;spang in the innards. Ease me down and get off for
+yerselves, if so be ye can, im&mdash;me&mdash;jit&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless.
+Dick's oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who
+said: &quot;Come on&mdash;the living before the dead!&quot; and so we made the
+well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.</p>
+
+<p>How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must
+figure for yourselves, if you can. The men of the British vanguard were
+all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no
+one of them raised a hand to stay us. I have thought since that mayhap
+they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above
+wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead. Be that as it may, we rode away
+unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain's slashings, and I
+in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house
+because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we
+were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.</p>
+
+<p>But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in true <i>ritter</i> fashion;
+and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now we are well out of that, what next? We can not go to Margery with
+the whole British army at our heels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour,&quot; I asserted. Then, as
+once before, I gave him my best bow. &quot;For the last time, it may be, let
+me play the lord of the manor. You are very welcome to my father's
+demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All?&quot; said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by
+side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, all,&quot; said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the
+lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my
+father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you do not love Madge more?&quot; he queried, his eye kindling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have
+the house and all its holdings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert
+Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed
+blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and
+when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad
+turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!&quot; he said. &quot;She
+is not here.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XLIX_A_LAWYER_HATH_HIS_FEE"></a><h2>XLIX<br />IN WHICH A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new
+tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were
+spared the knowing. For when he said, &quot;She is not here,&quot; two happenings
+intervened to give us both other things to think of.</p>
+
+<p>The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a
+troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the
+swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and
+bowing behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing
+more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the
+avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted
+things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an
+ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing
+without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.</p>
+
+<p>It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The horses!&mdash;we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring
+his bell and tell the redcoats we are here,&quot; he would say; and before I
+knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling
+softly to the big gray.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came
+obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when
+the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair
+of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So far, so good,&quot; quoth Dick. Then to the old black, who had stood by,
+saucer-eyed and speechless, the while: &quot;Anthony, do you be as big a
+numbskull as you were born to be, and hold these redcoat gentlemen in
+palaver till we can win out at the back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old majordomo nodded his good-will, but now my slow wit came in
+play. &quot;We've done it now,&quot; said I. &quot;The horses will go out as they came
+in, or not at all. Had you forgotten the stair at the back?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Judge for yourselves, my dears, if this were the time, place or crisis
+for a man to fling himself upon the hall settle, grip his ribs and laugh
+like any lack-wit. Yet this is what Richard Jennifer did.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the very midst of his gust of ill-timed merriment, while the
+horses were nosing niftily at their strange surroundings, and the
+hoof-strokes of the redcoat troop could be plainly heard on the gravel
+of the avenue, that I chanced to lift my eyes to the stair. There,
+looking down upon us with speechless astoundment in the blue-gray eyes,
+stood our dear lady.</p>
+
+<p>Another instant and she was with us, stamping her foot and crying: &quot;<i>Mon
+Dieu!</i> what is this? Are you gone mad, both of you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dick's answer was another burst of laughter, loud enough, you would
+think, to be heard by those beyond the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge&mdash;two horses and two
+asses,&quot; he said. And then to old Anthony: &quot;Open the door, Tony, and
+invite the gentlemen in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Margery was before him. Ah, my dears, a man's wit is like a
+matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder
+whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a
+woman's is like the spark in a tinder-box&mdash;a quick snip of flint and
+steel and you have your fire. In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy
+curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to
+the rear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quick!&quot; she cried; &quot;lead them gently, for the love of heaven!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand,
+rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the
+time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep
+within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses
+by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of
+ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.</p>
+
+<p>Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady.
+Calling Dick to help her&mdash;in all the fierce haste of it I marked that
+she called to Dick and not to me&mdash;she unlocked and opened the door to
+the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were
+safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed
+behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could
+see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.</p>
+
+<p>Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord!&quot; said he; &quot;did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your
+adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a
+soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is
+slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another
+and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my
+heart, at least.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on
+the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall,
+and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release
+or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or
+encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found
+the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+took a survey of our jail.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such
+an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly
+believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this
+stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room
+for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.</p>
+
+<p>Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly
+depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one
+of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no lack of potables,&quot; says my candle-bearer; &quot;but, unhappily,
+there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the
+horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good
+feeding of oats.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from
+the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks
+which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the
+sorrel or the gray was foaled.</p>
+
+<p>Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while
+before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Madge,&quot; said Dick, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and
+'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.</p>
+
+<p>What passed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the
+door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go
+abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better
+part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well,
+and more candles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far,&quot; he said.
+&quot;Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs
+pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge
+can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted
+stiff for our sakes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of
+it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at
+Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say
+no word to Richard.</p>
+
+<p>So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the
+horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle
+coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no
+more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving
+them a drink.</p>
+
+<p>When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the
+silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking
+in low tones to match the place and circumstance; and I do think in
+those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the
+outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.</p>
+
+<p>And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm
+came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the muffled
+rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor
+hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.</p>
+
+<p>I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There
+was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we
+knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of
+reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we
+two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid
+to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms,
+Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I
+learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have
+hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.</p>
+
+<p>From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things
+more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon
+the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack,&quot; he would
+say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet you said once&mdash;in that black night when I went mad and would have
+killed you&mdash;that your life lay between Madge and me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it did&mdash;and does. And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I
+have worn that life upon my sleeve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; he said, very gently; &quot;you need not go so high for a witness;
+have I not seen?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our
+dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and
+won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my
+brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful
+night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a
+friend&mdash;nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see
+him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for
+satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the
+guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip
+that was not of anger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear God,&quot; said he; &quot;'tis I who stand in the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not
+so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell
+you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the
+incomplete marriage&mdash;'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the
+Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to
+see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by
+her own appointment to meet him in her father's house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head slowly. &quot;You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do
+think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves&mdash;not me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could afford to smile at that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not
+love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he would only shake his head again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks
+in the glade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to
+tell me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None the less&mdash;ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never
+have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been
+something warmer than hatred in her heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there
+been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as
+the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western
+mountains? She never spoke a word to me, Dick, in all those weeks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her
+to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as
+she should be, and you are blunter than I&mdash;which is the worst I could
+say of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of
+the marriage is of her own proposing&mdash;at least, I should say I only
+hinted at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that
+you love her, Jack?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I
+have confessed, but this one thing I have not done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by
+word, &quot;what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you
+have made her that bitterest thing in all the world&mdash;a woman scorned?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I would not listen to him more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond
+the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the
+Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the
+burning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she
+wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, Dick,
+but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth
+under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my
+hand most lovingly, saying, &quot;Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such
+a price?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the
+matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if
+you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our
+necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the
+gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own
+trencher!&quot; he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. &quot;'Tis as you say;
+yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove
+it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have
+that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before
+we three go apart again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have
+drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young
+man brews for him. But if the priest&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most
+singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from
+all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding
+flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole
+cellar with its vivid glare.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord!&quot; says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; &quot;where did
+that come from?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was,
+or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the
+farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the
+great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the
+night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when
+another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place
+in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.</p>
+
+<p>The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and
+framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity
+peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert
+Stair's lawyer-factor.</p>
+
+<p>In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash
+and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in
+place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so
+far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was that?&quot; he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head,&quot;
+said I. &quot;He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as
+ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oho!&quot; said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I
+could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. &quot;They can hang me
+when I am too dead to cut and thrust more&mdash;not sooner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the
+horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade&mdash;one of our captures at the Cowpens;
+and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind,&quot; said I; &quot;give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play
+it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me
+as if I had said something moving. &quot;You are every inch a soldier, Jack;
+you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be.&quot; And
+he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.</p>
+
+<p>Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of
+our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that
+its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited
+till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like
+frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the
+bolt shot back.</p>
+
+<p>But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or
+timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the
+ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come!&quot; she panted; &quot;come quickly&mdash;there is not an instant to spare.
+The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the
+dragoons!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I cut in swiftly. &quot;He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the
+other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness
+to have us out and away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the
+order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang
+without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were
+his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard gave a low whistle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with
+us,&quot; he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. &quot;Your
+father?&quot; I gasped. &quot;And he sent you to save me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely,&quot; she said. &quot;Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?&quot;
+Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the
+poorest, I could see her eyes flash. &quot;Will you squander the last moment
+in silly questions?&quot; she burst out. &quot;Come, I say!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled. &quot;Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep
+the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to
+my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword
+to be my own good blade of proof&mdash;the ancient Ferara willed me by my
+father.</p>
+
+<p>Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then
+and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord
+Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events
+suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious
+footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry
+above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too late!&quot; said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind
+the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me
+to follow.</p>
+
+<p>We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us,
+when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping
+through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin&mdash;alone.</p>
+
+<p>What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man
+will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I
+guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper
+person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the
+trap were still safe shut and secure.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the
+wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to
+run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of
+those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and
+swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress
+Margery when he should have her in his power.</p>
+
+<p>A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing
+theme&mdash;ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's
+design to marry my widow and the estate&mdash;and I do think the lad would
+have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off
+suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing
+into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but
+squeak at him.</p>
+
+<p>He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would
+have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering
+old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this
+devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would
+be a rare jest&mdash;to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed,
+slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked
+lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and
+craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and
+he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the &quot;dead man&quot; from the
+wick. At that we heard him muttering again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by
+that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel,
+and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress
+Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door.
+But now he's gone&mdash;vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that
+damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose
+at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the
+cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little
+window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges,
+and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of
+the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw
+him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop
+down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when
+he discovered me.</p>
+
+<p>To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the
+still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes,
+searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange
+halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery
+we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light
+came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover
+of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in
+where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So-ho!&quot; said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, &quot;'tis
+you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap
+you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up
+with you and come along.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling
+frenzy-fit of protestation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir&mdash;a devil's own trap! I&mdash;I am not
+the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I&mdash;hands off, you cursed villains,
+or I'll have the law on you!&quot; this last when one of the men cast the
+noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides
+in the looping of another cord. &quot;By God! you shall all smart for this;
+all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend
+in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and
+Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched
+him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was
+rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and
+bidding his men make haste.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="L_RICHARD_COVERDALES_DEBT_WAS_PAID"></a><h2>L<br />HOW RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>For some breathless moments after we three were left alone in the
+Stygian darkness of the wine cellar, no word was spoken. The rolling of
+the thunder drum was muffled now, as it were booming out the dirge of
+the man who had digged a pit and had himself fallen therein; and the
+lightning flashes coming at longer intervals served but to intensify the
+gloom they lit up for the instant.</p>
+
+<p>It was a minced oath from Richard that first broke the spell that bound
+us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas too much for Madge,&quot; said he, &quot;she has fainted. Swing the door,
+and light another candle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did both as quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor,
+stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by
+all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches to bring her to.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Water!&quot; said Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with
+wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you.
+For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be
+cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the drenching doctor with the
+wine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord!&quot; cried Dick, the sweat standing out upon his face in great drops;
+&quot;this is terrible! What shall we do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jeanne will know what to do,&quot; I asserted. &quot;We must get her out of this
+and up to her chamber.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard started to his feet and stooped to gather the dear body of her
+in his arms. But in the act he paused and straightened himself to look
+fixedly at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you take her, Jack; she is&mdash;she is&mdash;your wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said I, drawing back. &quot;You are her own true lover; and could she
+choose her bearer&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A murrain on your finickings!&quot; he burst out. &quot;She may die whilst we are
+haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and
+begone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But bethink you, Dick,&quot; I urged; &quot;if you are taken, you have one chance
+in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a
+spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could
+twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's
+eyes flashed and his lip curled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Overlook it in me, if you can,&quot; he said, with fine scorn. &quot;I had not
+thought upon the peril of it.&quot; And with that he took her in his arms as
+she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But
+on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. &quot;Once more,
+your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me
+precedence. Can you trust me with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, dear lad; now and ever,&quot; said I; and so I pushed him out.</p>
+
+<p>After he was gone I made shift to lead the horses through the narrow
+passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point
+them toward the stables.</p>
+
+<p>This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was
+that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the
+wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that
+despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe.
+But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of
+impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and
+thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be
+set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate
+had plunged me.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the
+persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my
+sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of
+the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to
+dispel.</p>
+
+<p>And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with
+lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword
+and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the
+conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril
+more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and
+when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the
+hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird
+his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and
+fortitude as his creed hath taught him.</p>
+
+<p>To such a faring through all the days and nights of this grim desert of
+a future these lonely hours in the wine vault were a fitting vigil, as I
+conceived; and when I had hugged my misery close, and a sort of
+monstrous self-pity had come to make a seeming virtue of the hard
+necessity, I was best pleased to be alone. In such a frame of mind the
+sound of footsteps in the out-cellar, warning me that more company was
+coming, sent a wave of sullen anger to submerge me, and I do think 'twas
+in me to turn my back upon a friend who should come to tell me I was
+free to go at large.</p>
+
+<p>Since I had led forth the good horses the great oaken door had stood
+ajar. So I wondered why my visitor made so much ado rattling the key in
+the lock. Then it came to me suddenly that the noise and delay were
+meant to give me timely warning; and at the scent of threatening
+peril&mdash;a peril I might cope with and grapple soldierwise&mdash;I became a man
+again. A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its
+barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly
+behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.</p>
+
+<p>Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me
+more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her
+best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like
+stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at
+that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her
+candle held high to light the inner gloom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This way, Scipio,&quot; she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out
+the madeira bin. &quot;We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the
+Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting.&quot; Wherewith she stood aside
+to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.</p>
+
+<p>At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were
+about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup.
+Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come
+herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her
+word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my
+prisonment was near an end.</p>
+
+<p>I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many
+wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth
+and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon
+his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around
+before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.</p>
+
+<p>But whilst I hesitated I saw her start back with a little cry of terror.
+Standing in the arched doorway through which the mulatto had but now
+passed was a man cloaked, hatted, booted and spurred as for the road. At
+her cry he doffed his hat and ...</p>
+
+<p>My dears, I shall never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask
+this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid
+in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire
+had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the
+skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face.
+Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of
+this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet.</p>
+
+<p>And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha!&quot; he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness. &quot;You are
+surprised, Mistress Margery; you heard my Lord's order and thought I
+would be by now some miles on the road to Salisbury?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you were the loyal soldier you should be, sir,&quot; she said, drawing
+herself up proudly, &quot;you would be at the head of your troop, as his
+Lordship directed.&quot; And then, with a gesture that was most queenly:
+&quot;Stand aside, Sir&mdash;Libertine, and let me pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His answer was another mocking laugh, and he stepped within to close
+the door and lock it. When he turned to front her again his face was the
+face of a tormented devil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God! you think too lightly of me, Mistress Margery. Before ever this
+day dawned I owed you much, but like a spiteful little hellicat you must
+needs add to the score by making me a target for your wit at the
+supper-table. 'Twill cost a life to more than one of them who laughed
+with you, my lady, but 'twill cost you dearer still.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He came nearer as he spoke, thrusting that horrible face farther into
+the circle of candle-light; but she would not draw back nor flinch a
+hair, and I marked that the hand that held the candlestick was as steady
+as a rock. But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her
+shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning
+upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot; he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. &quot;'Twas passion in me once,
+and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it
+into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge.&quot; He snapped his fingers in
+her face. &quot;The thing they'll find here in the morning&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his
+back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between
+his ribs. But my dear lady would not have it so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!&quot; she cried;
+and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she
+became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.</p>
+
+<p>But now my blood was up. &quot;You are my wife,&quot; I said, coldly. &quot;If he had a
+dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But not that way&mdash;oh, not that way, I do beseech you!&quot; she begged.
+&quot;Think of what it will mean to you&mdash;and&mdash;and to me. For your own sake,
+Monsieur John.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took my heel from the man's back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your wish is law to me, dear lady. But your way is clear now; you may
+go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She took a step toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish
+it, he shall die like one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let
+him have his chance to die sword in hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember, I have your promise,&quot; she said, turning to go. &quot;The army is
+on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be
+here to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror. Watching his
+chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge,
+not at me, but at her.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that
+it was life for one of us and death for the other. I looked to see my
+lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast
+as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted
+the grim vault for the duel.</p>
+
+<p>As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this
+thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman's chance I had promised to
+give him. But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying
+by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure
+holding the candle aloft. As I have often said, he was a pretty
+swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of
+the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword
+play was most masterly.</p>
+
+<p>Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara's
+point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German
+long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have
+passed through him. After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I
+supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm
+could outweary his. Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant;
+and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce
+eyes glinting like a basilisk's, with no sign in them that my time was
+come to press him home.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, I did press him, inch by inch, driving him at each new
+clash of the steel a little deeper into the gloom that crowded close
+upon the narrow circle of candle-light. He saw my object&mdash;to push him to
+unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness&mdash;and
+he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I
+had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life
+and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold.</p>
+
+<p>Here the end came quickly. Being entangled among the broached butts he
+had no room to play skilfully. So presently it chanced that he caught
+his point in the chine of a cask and his blade snapped short at the
+hilt. With a yelling oath, hissing hot from the devil's thumb-book, he
+snatched up the broken blade to fling and stick it javelin-wise in my
+shoulder; and then I saw the dull gleam of the candle-light on the
+barrel of a pistol.</p>
+
+<p>Had he aimed the pistol at me, I trust I should still have given him his
+gentleman's chance. But when I saw him level the weapon at my dear lady
+... they came in one and the same heart-beat; the sword-thrust that
+found his life and took it; the crash of the pistol-shot echoing like a
+clap of thunder in the close vault, and pitchy darkness to draw its
+curtain over all.</p>
+
+<p>I know not how I reached her, pulling the broken sword-blade from my
+shoulder as I ran; nor can I tell you how an upgushing spring of
+thankfulness choked me when I found her unharmed by the bullet which had
+snuffed the candle out.</p>
+
+<p>She was in a most piteous state, now it was all over; and though I
+charged it all where I supposed it should belong&mdash;to the account of a
+natural womanly passion to cling to something in her moment of
+weakness&mdash;yet the blood ran quick in my veins when she suffered me to
+lead her out of that dismal, smoking death-pit, she clinging to me the
+while so close that I could feel the warmth of her and the fluttering of
+her dear heart beneath my hand.</p>
+
+<p>She said no word, nor did I, till we were come above stairs. We found
+the rooms on the main floor deserted by all save the blacks, who were
+clearing away the debris of the feast of leave-taking. In the hall we
+came upon old Anthony, putting on the chain of the outer door. Here my
+lady drew apart from me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is my Lord gone?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yis, Missa. He say tell yo' he gwine tek it mighty hawd yo' no come ter
+gib him de sti'up-cup.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And my father?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone to de lib'ry to wait fo' Massa Pengarbin; yis, Missa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She turned away, shuddering at this mention of the factor for whose
+coming the master would wait long and in vain, and I heard her murmur:
+&quot;Oh, the horror of this night!&quot; But in a moment she came back to me, and
+was her cool, calm self again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For that I am here, alive and well, I thank you, Captain Ireton. Need I
+say more?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I can not tell you what was in the words to make me hot with anger, as I
+had but now been hot with love. But the new wound in my shoulder was
+bleeding freely, and I would not let her see I was hurt; and if aught
+will stanch a wound, 'tis anger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not say so much,&quot; I retorted, bowing low. &quot;You have spoken now
+and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever
+so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as
+you, Mistress Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears. I saw what I had done
+and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong
+to the night's whip of scourgings.</p>
+
+<p>When she spoke again it was to say: &quot;This is your own house, Captain
+Ireton; what will you do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head in acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will find the&mdash;the person whom you wish to see in your old room in
+the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; I can find the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like
+a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where
+we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.</p>
+
+<p>I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come
+upon me, and drew her arm in mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that
+you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we
+climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of
+destiny at its farther end.</p>
+
+<p>We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking
+that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron
+brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a
+taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she
+were calling to me across the eternal abysses. &quot;Monsieur John!&mdash;you are
+hurt!&quot; And then, from a still remoter distance: &quot;Oh, Father
+Matthieu&mdash;Dick! come quickly! He is dying!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="LI_THE_GOOD_CAUSE_GAINS_A_CONVERT"></a><h2>LI<br />IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow
+land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not
+recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer
+filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?</p>
+
+<p>For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of
+the night are shuttled into the warp of life. But presently comes the
+master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid
+the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to
+mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the
+shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness
+regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, &quot;Dear
+God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or
+its number in the calendar.</p>
+
+<p>I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored
+soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney
+piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner;
+the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had
+rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen
+that once&mdash;was it yesterday or months ago?&mdash;had minded me of my mother.</p>
+
+<p>When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever
+dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I
+was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.</p>
+
+<p>So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, &quot;Dear God,'twas but a
+dream!&quot; and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery
+were sitting where I last remembered her.</p>
+
+<p>She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great
+chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the
+evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I sighed, and there was a catching of the breath at the bottom of it.
+Truly, the wondrous dream had had its agonies, but there were also
+beatitudes to tip the scale the other way. For I had dreamed this
+sweet-faced watcher was my wife&mdash;in name, at least.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas while I looked, minding not the eye-ache the effort cost, that she
+rose and came softly to the bedside. She said no word, but, as once in
+the dream-time, she laid a cool palm on my forehead. Weak as I was&mdash;and
+surely King David was not weaker when he wrote his bones were gone to
+water&mdash;the old love-madness of that other day came to thrill me at her
+touch, and I made as if I would take her hand and press it to my lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, sir,&quot; she said, with a swift return to sick-room discipline, &quot;you
+must not stir; you have been sorely hurt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye,&quot; said I; &quot;I do remember; 'twas in a duel with one Francis
+Falconnet. He said he would make you his&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now the soft palm was laid on my lips, and I kissed it till she snatched
+it away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Ma foi!</i>&quot; she cried; &quot;I think you are in a hopeful way to recover now,
+Captain Ireton. I do protest I shall go and send old Anthony to sit with
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anthony?&quot; said I; &quot;he was in the dream, too, putting up the chain on
+the hall door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, <i>mon Dieu</i>!&quot; she said softly, as if to herself, &quot;he is wandering
+yet.&quot; At which, as if to try to help me: &quot;'Twas no dream; you did see
+him putting on the chain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did I? I made sure I dreamed it. But tell me another thing; was it not
+yesterday that I met Sir Francis Falconnet under the oaks in the wood
+field and got this pair of redhot pincers in my shoulder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She turned away, and if I ever saw a tear there was one trembling in her
+eyelashes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas three full weeks ago,&quot; she said. &quot;And it was not in the wood
+field&mdash;'twas in the wine cellar. Never tell me you do not remember; I&mdash;I
+could never&mdash;ah, Mother of Sorrows! that would be worse than all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least,
+and so I did.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember well enough,&quot; I hastened to say. &quot;But being here, and seeing
+you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making
+all the interval stand as a dream. Have I been ailing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that
+Doctor Carew has twice given you over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I; &quot;there was no fear of that. I am like that man in the old
+German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby
+his chance to die. Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery;
+I have tried him too often.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush!&quot; she said; &quot;'tis an ill thing to jest about. Why should you want
+to die?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather ask why I should choose to live. But this is beside the mark.
+You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must
+e'en make the best of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of
+the heart; I knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, <i>n'est-ce pas</i>? And I must not
+let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at
+all&mdash;'tis Doctor Carew's order.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows;
+and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a
+pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post
+again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I
+lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better
+part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return
+to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to
+dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a
+bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I
+awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and
+once&mdash;but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and
+drowse in the great chair&mdash;I opened my eyes to find that my company was
+the master of the house.</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted
+candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony
+hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but
+at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin
+legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as
+though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give ye good even, Captain Ireton,&quot; he said, finally, rasping the
+greeting out at me as it had been a curse. &quot;I hope ye've slept well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his
+coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in
+my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir,&quot; he said, after a longish
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this
+room, Mr. Stair,&quot; I would say.</p>
+
+<p>He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good
+care of his own; and I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on
+your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed
+to. But his spoken word belied the nods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The ways of Providence are inscrutable&mdash;something inscrutable, Captain
+Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your
+mercies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier,
+I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the
+field.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay
+wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of
+substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country
+than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?&quot; I asked, feigning a surprise
+which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some&mdash;yourself, for example, and
+the leal land of adoption for others&mdash;your humble servant, to wit. I've
+taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this I must needs laugh outright.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laugh and ye will,&quot; he said, quite placably; &quot;ye shall never laugh the
+peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
+precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
+Captain Ireton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
+tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news,&quot; he chuckled. &quot;Whilst ye were on
+your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
+the prov&mdash;the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
+'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
+and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
+day at Guilford Court House.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A victory?&quot; I would ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
+I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
+they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
+reaving redcoats in these parts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
+telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
+it showed its head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
+ye,&quot; he went on. &quot;So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
+I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
+your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
+land for ye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you have?&quot; said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of
+saying more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have that&mdash;every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas
+since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to
+account to ye for every season's crop&mdash;when ye'll pay down the bit
+steward's fee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; said I; &quot;you are an honest man, Mr. Stair.&quot; Then, to humor him
+to the top of his bent: &quot;Haphazarding a guess, now; would this
+accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the
+gullibility of his customer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a
+few hundred pounds, more or less&mdash;sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,&quot;
+he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it
+was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. &quot;I've brought ye that last
+will and testament ye signed,&quot; handing me the parchment. &quot;No doubt
+you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a
+codicil or two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the
+marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: &quot;Let us be frank with each other
+in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter
+between us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's a jade!&quot; he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But
+he recovered his self-control instantly. &quot;Ye'd no expect a romantic bit
+lassie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old
+dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything,
+I daresay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will tell you the plain truth of it,&quot; I said. &quot;This marriage was
+never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the
+time; a makeshift to serve a purpose. If you think I would hold your
+daughter to it&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about! Ye'll never cast the
+poor bit lassie off that way! Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will
+have a word to say to that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected
+that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to.
+Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no 'casting off' about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church,
+there is good ground for an appeal to Rome. The marriage as it stands
+is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough
+legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still
+lacking everything of&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He could not wait to let me finish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lacking, d'ye say?&quot; he rapped out, wrathfully. &quot;And whose fault is
+that, ye cold-blooded stick? Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and
+heels into your own wife's bed-room? And how do you thank me? I'm to
+suppose ye quarrel wi' her like the dour-faced imp o' Sawtan that ye
+are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man
+old enough to be your father!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it. Yet
+I would not suffer him to bluster me aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more
+as you must have known that Mistress Margery's faith was plighted to
+Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did I know it?&quot; he shrilled. &quot;That lang-legged jackanapes of a Dickie
+Jennifer? Light o' love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a
+finger for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are talking far enough beside the mark now,&quot; I retorted. &quot;Your
+daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this
+entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from
+the wars.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will, ye say? And what will become o' the braw acres of Appleby
+that gait, I'd like to know? But ye're daft, man; clean daft. Didn't I
+speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode
+away after they had pitten ye to bed? She tell't him flat she loved
+another man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Another man?&quot; I echoed. &quot;I&mdash;explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair.
+What other man&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of
+cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!&quot; he quavered, when all his breath was
+spent upon the bigger malisons. &quot;Has it never come intil your thick
+numbskull that the poor fule lassie is sick wi' love for ye, ye
+dour-faced loon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I
+heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the
+choice phrases he could lay tongue to.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="LII_BRINGS_US_TO_THE_JOURNEYS_END"></a><h2>LII<br />WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade
+did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said
+to the one account&mdash;the miser's.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but
+indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of
+Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made
+sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of
+substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his
+goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet
+here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into
+rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.</p>
+
+<p>I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit
+for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to
+wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap
+at the door and Mistress Margery entered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is
+turned?&quot; she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the
+candles in the mantel sconces.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the
+chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat
+faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful
+protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?</p>
+
+<p>Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays
+bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a passing gust
+of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my
+moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she
+used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself
+again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her
+to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.</p>
+
+<p>For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father has been with you,&quot; she said. &quot;I hope you did not quarrel
+with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes
+two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. &quot;He came to
+give me this,&quot; I added, handing her the will.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there
+softly to herself.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&quot;'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife,
+Margery&mdash;' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so,
+would you, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis but a form,&quot; I would say. &quot;All wives are 'loving' in lawyers'
+speech.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the
+moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I would not let her pin me down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear
+lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but
+another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not once?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could
+do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth
+and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the
+Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at
+day-dawn in the oak glade?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She would not answer me direct.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Twas I who brought you to that pass,&quot; she said, speaking soft and low.
+&quot;But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak
+glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your
+shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have
+followed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Saying this she fell silent for a space, and when she spoke again she
+was become by some subtle transmutation my trusting little maid of the
+by-gone halcyon-time.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days,
+Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me,
+had I had one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again
+to-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Try me and see, dear lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'&quot; she pouted. &quot;'Twas 'Margery' and
+'Monsieur John' a year agone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you
+better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she said; &quot;that is Dick's name for me; and&mdash;and it is of Dick that
+I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond
+there was between us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly?&quot; There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of
+the word, but it was gone when she went on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better.
+Tell me, if you please, must I marry him&mdash;when&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When you are free to do it?&quot; I finished for her. &quot;Why should you not,
+my dear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and
+would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You used to say&mdash;in that other time&mdash;that love should go before a
+marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present.
+But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of
+happy children at play.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I?&mdash;now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell
+me; do I love him as his mistress should?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nay, surely,&quot; said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me,
+&quot;surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have I?&quot; she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that
+came straight from her French mother. &quot;Mayhap you overheard me say it,
+Monsieur Eavesdropper?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God help me, little one&mdash;so I did,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like
+an accusing goddess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have
+dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that
+I had not failed in any wifely duty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The time and circumstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far
+from blaming you, my dear. But let it pass, 'tis enough that I know you
+love him as he loves you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon
+the hassock, laughing merrily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman's heart! 'Tis you
+should be the lover, instead of Dick. He rides a-courting as he would
+charge a legion on a battle-field. But nothing would ever tempt you to
+be so masterful rough, would it, Monsieur John? You would look deep into
+your sweetheart's eyes and say&mdash;Tell me what you would say, <i>mon ami</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, my dears, I hope no one of you will ever be tempted as I was tempted
+then. I forgot my dear lad, forgot honor, forgot everything save that I
+had leave to tell her how I had loved her from the first; how I should
+go on loving her to the end. So for a moment I hung trembling on the
+brink; and then she pushed me over.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this how you would do, Monsieur&mdash;Monsieur Ogre?&mdash;sit stock still and
+glower at the poor thing as if you were between two minds as to loving
+her or eating her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bent quickly, took her face between my hands and kissed her
+twice&mdash;thrice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what I should do. Now that you have made me what I was not
+before, are you satisfied?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Twas long before she gave me a word. And when she spoke it was only to
+say: &quot;Are you not most monstrous ashamed, Monsieur John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot; said I. &quot;I am but a man, and you have roused that part of me that
+knows neither shame nor remorse. I love you, Mistress Margery; do you
+hear? I have loved you since that day in June when I came back from
+death's door to find you sitting here to bear me company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She locked her fingers across her knee and would not look at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But by your own showing you should be ashamed, sir,&quot; she insisted.
+&quot;What of the dear friend to whom you would give up even the love of your
+mistress?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may flay me as you will; I shall neither flinch nor go back from my
+word. You are mine, and I shall give you up to no man. I know I have not
+your love&mdash;shall never have it. Also, I know that I have gained an enemy
+where once I had a loving friend. Richard Jennifer may kill me if he
+please&mdash;he shall have the chance to do it; but you are mine and shall be
+whilst I live to claim and hold you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was something less than anger in the blue-gray eyes when she let
+me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful
+mockery in them when she said: &quot;Dear heart! how masterful rough you
+have grown, all in a moment, my Lord.&quot; And then the beautiful eyes
+filled and she said, &quot;Poor Dick!&quot; in a way to make me suffer all the
+torments of that old myth-king who could never quaff the water that was
+ever rising to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye, you may love him, if you must and will,&quot; I gloomed. &quot;God pity me!
+I know you do love him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up quickly. &quot;So you have said a dozen times before. Tell me,
+Monsieur Oracle, how do you know it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I tell you, you will hate me more than you do now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That would be hard, indeed,&quot; she murmured. &quot;Yet I would hear you say
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen, then: once, when we three were at the very door and threshold
+of death, you wrote the cry of your heart out on a bit of paper for a
+leave-taking and sent it to the man you loved. You said, 'Though you
+must needs believe my love is pledged to your dear friend and mine, 'tis
+yours, and yours alone.' Were not these your very words?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her &quot;yes&quot; was but the lightest whisper, but I heard it and went on.
+&quot;That is all, save this; the Indian bearer of your letter blundered and
+gave it me instead of Dick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked me full in the eyes and my soul went all afire. Then she laid
+her cheek against my knee and I heard her dear voice as it had been a
+chime of sweet-toned joy-bells:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Monsieur John; how blind this thing called love can make us all.
+Suppose&mdash;suppose the Indian did not blunder, dear lord and master of
+me?&quot;</p>
+<br />
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 17690-h.txt or 17690-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/9/17690</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/17690-h/images/cover-tb.jpg b/17690-h/images/cover-tb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd07a99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/cover-tb.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/cover.jpg b/17690-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..587320c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image1-tb.jpg b/17690-h/images/image1-tb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7327e31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image1-tb.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image1.jpg b/17690-h/images/image1.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a59b4b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image1.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image2-tb.jpg b/17690-h/images/image2-tb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7706a46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image2-tb.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image2.jpg b/17690-h/images/image2.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1e49af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image2.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image3-tb.jpg b/17690-h/images/image3-tb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7e6859
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image3-tb.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image3.jpg b/17690-h/images/image3.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4138622
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image3.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image4-tb.jpg b/17690-h/images/image4-tb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..951c3bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image4-tb.jpg
diff --git a/17690-h/images/image4.jpg b/17690-h/images/image4.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..695acdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690-h/images/image4.jpg
diff --git a/17690.txt b/17690.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e31ae0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,16287 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Master of Appleby, by Francis Lynde,
+Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Master of Appleby
+       A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
+
+
+Author: Francis Lynde
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2006  [eBook #17690]
+Last Updated: December 27, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Clare Coney, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17690-h.htm or 17690-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690/17690-h/17690-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690/17690-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MASTER OF APPLEBY
+
+A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with
+the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but
+Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two
+Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
+
+by
+
+FRANCIS LYNDE
+
+Illustrations by T. de Thulstrup
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright 1902
+The Bowen-Merrill Company
+October
+
+
+
+
+
+                    TO
+          Mr. Edward G. Richmond
+        OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,
+     WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
+       MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY
+         REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR
+           THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
+                 INSCRIBED
+
+
+
+[Illustration: But now I was fronting death and could be as firm as
+she]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+      I   I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD                              1
+
+     II   KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS                            15
+
+    III   MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST                                25
+
+     IV   MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY                           36
+
+      V   I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED                       47
+
+     VI   RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND                           60
+
+    VII   MY LADY HATH NO PART                                 75
+
+   VIII   I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY                         88
+
+     IX   A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR                         98
+
+      X   A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF                        107
+
+     XI   A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH                       114
+
+    XII   THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS                     129
+
+   XIII   A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS                                 141
+
+    XIV   THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR                    150
+
+     XV   A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP                      164
+
+    XVI   JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH                    171
+
+   XVII   LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP                        183
+
+  XVIII   WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH                         194
+
+    XIX   A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS                   207
+
+     XX   WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE                      217
+
+    XXI   WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE                228
+
+   XXII   THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR                   235
+
+  XXIII   WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS                   251
+
+   XXIV   WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY                          259
+
+    XXV   UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR                    269
+
+   XXVI   THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE                       279
+
+  XXVII   A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL                   287
+
+ XXVIII   I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE                             296
+
+   XXIX   HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER                     309
+
+    XXX   EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES                324
+
+   XXXI   WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH                              336
+
+  XXXII   I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET                             351
+
+ XXXIII   I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS                            361
+
+  XXXIV   I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN                    369
+
+   XXXV   I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE                         376
+
+  XXXVI   I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS                  382
+
+ XXXVII   WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK                         395
+
+XXXVIII   WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER                               412
+
+  XXXIX   THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS                         418
+
+     XL   VAE VICTIS                                          432
+
+    XLI   I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE                446
+
+   XLII   MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS                     454
+
+  XLIII   I DRINK A DISH OF TEA                               460
+
+   XLIV   WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END                 470
+
+    XLV   WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT                        480
+
+   XLVI   OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES              488
+
+  XLVII   ARMS AND THE MAN                                    505
+
+ XLVIII   WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY                            517
+
+   XLIX   A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE                               531
+
+      L  RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID                    549
+
+     LI  THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT                       562
+
+    LII   BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END                      573
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD
+
+
+The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
+brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.
+
+'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
+calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
+west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
+higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
+lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
+shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
+once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.
+
+Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
+to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
+pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
+the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
+exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
+arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
+rejoicing.
+
+The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
+valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
+see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
+where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
+provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
+London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
+rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
+cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
+service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
+courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.
+
+Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
+had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
+in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
+and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
+had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
+than yesterweek--this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
+must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
+doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
+and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:
+
+"I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
+Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
+Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?"
+
+It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
+his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
+gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
+courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
+stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
+I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: "At your
+service, sir."
+
+Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
+packet.
+
+"From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
+captain in his Majesty's German Legion," he announced, with stern
+dignity.
+
+Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
+Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
+some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
+the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
+he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
+kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
+event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
+November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
+first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
+say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.
+
+"I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet," I
+demurred, when I had read the challenge. "He spoke slightingly of a
+lady, and I did but--"
+
+"Your answer, Captain Ireton!" quoth my youngster, curtly. "I am not
+empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations."
+
+"Not so fast, if you please," I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint
+your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
+sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
+with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
+shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
+of any other breed."
+
+At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.
+
+"If you can," he qualified. "But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
+I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
+you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
+gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's wit."
+
+Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
+I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
+otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
+as well as I might.
+
+Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
+presently a bit of cold deer's meat and some cakes of maize bread
+baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
+sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries of the Indian scuppernong, to
+wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
+mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
+cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.
+
+It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
+the day in Queensborough.
+
+"Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
+post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
+in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
+harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
+as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
+Catawba."
+
+"So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
+take it."
+
+Jennifer eyed me curiously. "Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
+no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
+Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North."
+
+"De Kalb?" I suggested.
+
+Again the curious eyeshot. "Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
+though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
+about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg."
+
+"I? What should I know?"
+
+"You know a deal--or else the gossips lie most recklessly."
+
+"They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
+other of the patriot side. What are they saying?"
+
+"That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia--to see what
+you can see."
+
+"A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
+the oath on either side."
+
+He looked vastly disappointed. "But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
+to think twice in such a cause?"
+
+"As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine."
+
+"Now God Save us, John Ireton!" he burst out in a fine fervor of
+youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, "I had never
+thought to hear your father's son say the like!"
+
+I shrugged.
+
+"And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
+his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
+declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
+landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
+seat."
+
+Jennifer shrugged in his turn.
+
+"Gilbert Stair--for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it--Gilbert
+Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
+this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
+course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
+skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
+and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
+Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
+him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
+private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped--"
+
+I laid a hand on his knee. "Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
+Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
+rendezvous."
+
+For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
+he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
+some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.
+
+"Softly, my lad," I said; "'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
+my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
+ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
+the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?"
+
+He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
+harder at his pipe.
+
+"I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
+powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
+again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
+to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and--and--"
+
+He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.
+
+"Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
+stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
+its scabbard, I'll be bound."
+
+"You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less," he confessed,
+shamefacedly. "'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
+blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
+little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
+order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
+and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
+blue should never look upon her face again with her good will."
+
+I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
+somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
+possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
+homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
+mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
+all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
+frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
+happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
+need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
+love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
+was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.
+
+"Dost love her, Dick?" I asked.
+
+"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
+Master Wytheby's school."
+
+"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."
+
+"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
+then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
+would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
+the thing it is."
+
+"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
+leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
+meant.
+
+"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
+the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
+doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
+enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
+to go, or die of shame!"
+
+He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
+campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.
+
+By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
+apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.
+
+"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
+happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
+to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
+Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
+over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."
+
+"As how?" I inquired.
+
+"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
+Falconnet was for having us make the duel _a outrance_. But that's
+beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
+serve him now."
+
+"'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
+the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
+captain."
+
+"True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
+its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?"
+
+Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
+of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip--gossip about a tale
+which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
+grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
+hap in fencing with words.
+
+"The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
+in passing."
+
+Jennifer laughed.
+
+"And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
+carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
+light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?"
+
+"Who should know that better than--" I was fairly on the brink of
+betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. "I care not
+if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before--and with a
+good swordsman now and then."
+
+"Anan?" said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this
+toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
+lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
+own affairs?"
+
+"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
+asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
+she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."
+
+"Young?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
+mayhap I can name her for you."
+
+"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
+painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
+with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
+witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
+it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle."
+
+To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
+the fire.
+
+"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
+Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"
+
+I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
+are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
+quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
+the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."
+
+"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"
+
+"No; the quarrel is mine."
+
+"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
+fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"
+
+I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
+mystery.
+
+"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
+daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."
+
+"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.
+
+"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
+fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
+you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."
+
+"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events,
+I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
+cause."
+
+"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"
+
+"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
+and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
+Falconnet's next friend.
+
+"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
+may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
+shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
+is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"
+
+At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
+Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
+as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--
+
+"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.
+
+He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
+he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
+outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
+I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.
+
+"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
+now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
+but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
+Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."
+
+After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
+horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
+maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
+of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
+somber reminders.
+
+I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
+Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
+chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
+Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
+battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.
+
+I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
+strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
+and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
+are in order against their time of using.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS
+
+
+It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
+father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
+Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
+best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
+Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
+my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
+
+Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in those
+days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
+guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
+home from garrison duty in the Canadas.
+
+Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
+wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
+less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
+good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
+down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
+that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
+less to my score than others had to theirs.
+
+It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
+his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
+my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
+clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
+of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
+
+As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
+not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
+lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
+purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
+the _jeunesse doree_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
+rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
+was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
+purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.
+
+Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
+not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
+comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
+the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
+merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
+when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
+
+As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
+affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
+Carolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--I
+should there and then have called the slayer to his account.
+
+How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
+been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"
+as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
+figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
+the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
+this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
+and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
+of oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherers
+and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any
+honest gentleman to oppose them.
+
+What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken in
+arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth
+receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.
+With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and
+a few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated at
+the Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
+
+When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had no
+heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and
+reward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw
+up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,
+and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, was
+lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old
+field-marshal on the Turkish frontier.
+
+To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches
+and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news
+traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in
+the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of
+the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and
+from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolina
+was still another year.
+
+What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trot
+thence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.
+Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long
+faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve
+as mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, with
+slow-match well alight for its firing.
+
+Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were already
+widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was
+that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into
+Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was
+made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration
+of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment
+by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
+
+You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was
+chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands
+the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
+
+Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne
+of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed
+Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest
+of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,
+in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father
+knew all the metes and bounds of it.
+
+I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was
+told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when
+he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not
+yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to
+the son.
+
+It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert
+Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat
+at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with
+his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was
+Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
+
+For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew
+not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and
+profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be
+minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish
+border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and
+swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on
+these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I
+became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of
+wrath.
+
+On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path
+that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path
+to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by
+time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy
+days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill
+glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up
+under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of
+blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
+
+Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when I
+had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients
+now--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had
+been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that
+lay between, he knew me at once.
+
+Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small
+portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks
+were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger
+Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,
+on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place,
+Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned
+deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,
+a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf
+torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
+
+     _My Son:_
+
+     _I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and
+     my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We
+     have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
+     to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
+     bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
+     devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
+     Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
+     cause of liberty._
+
+     _Thy father,_
+          _Roger Ireton._
+
+
+
+You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
+heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
+summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
+learned what I have here set down of my father's end.
+
+The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
+if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
+the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
+the bearings of the nearest patriot force.
+
+'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
+for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
+light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
+invasion--so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
+Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
+in instant readiness for fight or flight.
+
+Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far
+from Lord Cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the Wateree,
+I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good
+reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
+embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
+Charlotte.
+
+I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
+and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
+Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
+She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
+women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
+lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
+for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
+moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
+proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.
+
+A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
+tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
+lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
+quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
+of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
+bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
+tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
+bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.
+
+Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
+act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though
+nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
+Richard Coverdale.
+
+"So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning
+over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
+and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
+would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
+page here for you.
+
+"Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain;
+and then I took two strides to front him fairly.
+
+"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and,
+lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
+like an ox in the shambles.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST
+
+
+True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
+of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
+the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.
+
+After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful
+enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his
+second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken
+with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one
+of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried
+shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.
+
+It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool
+and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which
+washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink
+to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the
+bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the
+fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing. On the right the river,
+late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the
+waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of
+our horses there were none. Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of
+nature's morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught
+remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the
+countryside. Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for
+Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.
+
+"Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot
+tempest of ours," he said. "But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial
+savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly. The
+post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel
+Tarleton's doings. 'Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln's
+reinforcements come too late. They gave battle but faint-heartedly,
+being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and
+begged for quarter--begged, and were cut down as they stood."
+
+"Faugh!" said I. "That is but hangman's work. And yet in London I heard
+that this same Colonel Tarleton was with Lord Howe in Philadelphia and
+was made much of by the ladies."
+
+Jennifer's laugh was neither mirthful nor pleasant.
+
+"'Tis a weakness of the sex," he scoffed. "The women have a fondness for
+a man with a dash of the brute in him."
+
+I laughed also, but without bitterness.
+
+"You say it feelingly. Do you speak by the book?"
+
+"Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all
+manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this
+baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but
+a pattern of his brutal colonel."
+
+I put two and two together.
+
+"So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?"
+
+"Oh, surely. Gilbert Stair keeps open house for any and all of the
+winning hand, as I told you."
+
+The thought of this unspoiled young maiden having aught to do with such
+a thrice-accursed despoiler of women made my blood boil afresh; and in
+the heat of it I let my secret slip, or rather some small part of it.
+
+"Sir Francis had ever a sure hand with the women," I said; and then I
+could have bitten my masterless tongue.
+
+"So?" queried Jennifer. "Then this is not your first knowing of him?"
+
+"No." So much I said and no more.
+
+We rode on in silence for a little space, and then my youthling must
+needs break out again in fresh beseechings.
+
+"Tell me what you know of him, and what it was he said of Madge," he
+entreated. "You can't deny me now, Jack."
+
+"I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has
+been."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him
+through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all
+men--and all women, as well."
+
+"God speed you," quoth my loyal ally. "I knew not your quarrel with him
+was so bitter."
+
+"It is to the death."
+
+"So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he--"
+
+I divined what he would say and broke in upon him.
+
+"Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I
+know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be
+sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have
+seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old
+regiment of the Blues."
+
+"Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he
+shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
+know not what it was he said."
+
+I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
+hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.
+
+"Indifferent well."
+
+"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
+hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
+guinea at ten paces."
+
+From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
+rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
+came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
+Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
+cases as he drew rein.
+
+"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
+spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
+deploying into the road as to surround us.
+
+"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"
+
+"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
+Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
+since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"
+
+"Aye,--standing, if need be."
+
+"Then at them, in God's name. Charge!"
+
+It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my
+old field-marshal's maxim, _Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu
+zerschmettern_; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did
+strike both first and hard.
+
+A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to
+guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.
+In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered
+instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we
+came to the steel.
+
+It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced
+blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the
+half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me
+room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to
+death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.
+
+"Over with you!" I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him
+down with a great scythe handled as a sword.
+
+Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for
+the race beyond. When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were
+safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.
+
+There was no cost worth counting. A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me,
+and the back of Jennifer's sword hand scored lightly across by another
+of the random missiles summed up our woundings. Dick whipped out his
+kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if
+any Tory cared to follow.
+
+"Lord, Jack! I owe you one to keep and one to pay back," quoth my
+youngster, warmly. "I never saw a swordsman till this day!"
+
+"Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn
+them. And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools. The
+two with swords had little wit to use them."
+
+"Oh, come!" said he. "I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.
+If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach
+me some of these 'mere tricks' of yours."
+
+I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the
+distance.
+
+"Dick, you passed this way an hour ago; was that breastwork in the road
+then?"
+
+"Not a stick of it."
+
+"Then we may dare say our volunteer captain fights unwillingly."
+
+"How so?" he demanded, being much too straightforward himself to suspect
+duplicity in others.
+
+"'Tis plain enough. This was a trap, meant to stop or delay us, and I'll
+wager high it was the baronet who set and baited it. It would please him
+well to be able to say what our failure to come would give him warrant
+for. Let us gallop a bit, lest we be late and so play into his hand."
+
+Jennifer smiled grimly and gave his horse the rein. "I think you'd
+charge the Fall of Man to him if that would give you better leave to
+kill him. I'd hate to own you for my enemy, John Ireton."
+
+For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous
+under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking
+up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton,
+fair of skin and ruddy of face.
+
+If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment
+at its failure. His face, dark and inscrutable as it always was, was
+made more sinister by the plasters knitting up his broken cheek, but I
+was right glad to make sure that my blow had spared his eyes. Richly as
+he deserved his fate, I thought it would be ill to think on afterward
+that I had had him at a disadvantage of my own making.
+
+There was little time wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us
+he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to
+Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring
+and balancing of weapons, and then Richard came back.
+
+"The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and
+is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords
+which he offers. Will you change your terms?"
+
+"No; I am content to fight with my own weapon."
+
+Jennifer nodded. "So I told him." And then: "There was no surgeon to be
+had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.
+Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings
+to fight without one."
+
+"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with
+them and be at it."
+
+Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose
+the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to
+give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm
+which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my
+own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade,
+straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who
+strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the
+plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but
+devilish.
+
+The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I
+stopped him.
+
+"One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?"
+
+The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied
+smoothly.
+
+"Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor."
+
+"'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied
+to Richard Coverdale nine years agone," said I; and then I signed
+Jennifer to give the word.
+
+"Attention, gentlemen! On guard!"
+
+My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard
+another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a
+bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I
+heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and
+the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at
+me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.
+
+Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that
+he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal
+well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my
+advantage he had pricked me lightly with that extra inch of slender
+point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier
+weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and
+lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should
+have him.
+
+Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for
+on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well
+cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in
+my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of
+hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.
+
+I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did
+likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a
+hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.
+
+In the very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
+to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire prick of
+the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
+stood.
+
+Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
+hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
+fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
+through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
+full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I
+do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
+point. Can I say more?"
+
+How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
+aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
+glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
+blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
+with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY
+
+
+When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
+in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
+oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
+shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
+soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
+I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
+counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
+faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
+hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
+boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
+or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.
+
+At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
+an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
+fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
+and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
+on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
+David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
+softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.
+
+I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
+opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
+stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
+great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
+been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.
+
+Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
+a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
+should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
+of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.
+
+She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the
+sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,
+with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one
+that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action;
+but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April
+sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.
+
+I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting
+the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made
+sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles
+scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking
+lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look
+of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in
+the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held
+the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple,
+care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were
+frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of
+glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.
+
+Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish
+beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old
+field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand
+in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of
+them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and
+furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.
+
+What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the
+subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be
+wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for
+the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her
+and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in
+my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in
+earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well
+worth any penalty.
+
+At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and
+stood beside me.
+
+"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the
+thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her
+voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.
+"They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"
+
+I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I
+said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."
+
+At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile
+like that she had flung to Falconnet.
+
+"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the
+sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French
+of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's
+officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"
+
+"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked
+where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the
+answer to both questions.
+
+In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess,
+steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.
+
+"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because
+there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard
+Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with
+Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"
+
+I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the
+German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from
+me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should
+thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my
+enemy and his second to share the burden of me.
+
+"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.
+
+"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to
+my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your
+wound dressed?"
+
+She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to
+hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as
+little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field,
+and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's
+hands.
+
+"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the
+wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel
+with Sir Francis?"
+
+"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my
+foolish tongue.
+
+"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the
+town, and that says--"
+
+"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it
+stand so."
+
+"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this
+unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"
+
+Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to
+answer her. But I could not let it go thus.
+
+"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to
+turn her safe aside.
+
+"Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me."
+
+"Nay, that I may not."
+
+Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she
+laughed.
+
+"'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the
+telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?"
+
+Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for
+jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of
+her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on
+drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and
+yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any
+tender-hearted woman might.
+
+"There," she said; "'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are
+glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it
+heals."
+
+"And how long will that be, think you?"
+
+"We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for
+your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton."
+
+With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from
+lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again.
+When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.
+
+After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands,
+and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she,
+or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius,
+and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound.
+From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from
+Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually
+going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.
+
+Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love
+me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange
+that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his
+unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other
+things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir
+Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and
+going.
+
+But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was
+the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's
+loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had
+finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's
+militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory
+stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.
+
+With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of
+the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and
+with her cheeks aflame.
+
+"Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which,
+failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!" she cried. "Was
+it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending
+this headstrong boy to his death?"
+
+Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had
+sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found
+no thong to cut so deep.
+
+"God help me!" I groaned. "Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?"
+
+"No, he is not dead," she confessed, relenting a little. "But he has the
+baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas
+disagreement with Sir Francis."
+
+I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but
+the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for
+the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad
+enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.
+
+"Why don't you speak, sir?" she snapped, flying out at me in a passion
+for my lack of words.
+
+"What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me
+ungenerous."
+
+"You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon
+for calling my father's guest hard names."
+
+"The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it
+was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair."
+
+At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never
+heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be
+on the forgiving hand.
+
+"Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other
+could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same
+breath." Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and
+she sighed and said: "Poor Dick!"
+
+As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the
+sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that
+curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must
+straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I
+should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: "He loves you well,
+Mistress Margery."
+
+She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or
+loving; I could not tell which it was.
+
+"Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?"
+
+Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of
+mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy
+disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she
+laughed again.
+
+"Oh, you do amuse me mightily, _mon Capitaine_," she cried. "I do
+protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!"
+
+"Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?" I asked, glad of any
+excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.
+
+"No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great
+world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should
+tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?"
+
+Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she
+came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished
+suddenly and she spoke softly.
+
+"I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always
+to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of
+practice."
+
+How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most
+highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had
+given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me
+could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
+I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
+little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.
+
+From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
+those same Huguenot _emigres_; and when I looked not at her I could
+speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
+looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
+knew not always what it was I said.
+
+After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
+candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
+struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
+I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
+this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
+loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED
+
+
+Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
+sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
+oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
+which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
+loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's
+friend.
+
+If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
+passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
+cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
+dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether
+blameless, as I was not.
+
+Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
+hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
+review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
+of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
+comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
+she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
+elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.
+
+You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
+frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
+turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
+But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
+jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.
+
+In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
+sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
+father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
+that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
+she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
+telling me naively of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
+save only Richard Jennifer.
+
+And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though
+never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this
+point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she
+would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she
+knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it
+were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.
+
+Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of
+these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of
+friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So
+long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come
+to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I
+thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For
+love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and
+once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or
+cunningly devised.
+
+With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed
+slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world
+without--if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a
+syllable to me--and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond
+the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.
+
+Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not
+ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and
+angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride
+took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing
+me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for
+any useful thing.
+
+One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised
+me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as
+was her wont when I grew restive.
+
+"What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be
+about it, Monsieur Impetuous?" she cried. "_Fi donc!_ you'd try the
+patience of a saint!"
+
+"Which you are not," I ventured. "But truly, Margery, I am growing
+stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know.
+Besides--"
+
+"Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?"
+
+I laughed. "I'll say whatever you would have me say--so it be not the
+truth."
+
+"I'll have you say nothing until you sit down."
+
+She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the
+window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at
+my feet.
+
+"Now you may go on," she said.
+
+"You have not told me what you would have me say."
+
+"The truth," she commanded.
+
+"'"What is truth," said jesting Pilate,'" I quoted. "Why do you suppose
+my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and
+place?"
+
+"You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so
+impatient to be gone."
+
+"Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide
+inactive when duty calls?"
+
+"That is not the whole truth," she said, half absently. "You think you
+are unwelcome here."
+
+"'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be
+relieved when he is safely quit of me."
+
+"'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John," she retorted, giving me
+back my own words. "Has ever word been brought you that he would speed
+your parting?"
+
+"Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never
+seen his face, as yet."
+
+"And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and
+you are Roger Ireton's son."
+
+"I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the
+unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my
+seeking--this asylum in his house."
+
+"True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's."
+
+"What is it, then?--besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?"
+
+"I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin."
+
+"That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?"
+
+She looked away from me and said: "He is my father's factor and man of
+affairs."
+
+"Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught
+to this parchment-faced--to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your
+father, or any."
+
+"How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father
+from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among
+the rebels?"
+
+"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed--oh, pardon me again, I
+pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was
+that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was
+too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."
+
+"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"
+
+"'Twas his threat to me--to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you
+greatly blame me, Margery?"
+
+"No."
+
+Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the
+more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for
+speaking.
+
+"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length.
+"He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
+but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."
+
+Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
+smiled within.
+
+"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan
+may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."
+
+'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
+answering flash.
+
+"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have
+his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
+come and quarter on us--"
+
+I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
+in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.
+
+"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
+yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."
+
+She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of
+my treason, Monsieur John."
+
+"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.
+
+She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?"
+Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must
+not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
+saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
+have told me."
+
+"What do you know?"
+
+"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
+and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
+Ireton."
+
+"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
+I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"
+
+"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all
+mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"
+
+Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
+for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
+time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
+greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
+fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
+briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
+might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
+again.
+
+"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own
+purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de
+Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.
+I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and
+the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am
+Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my
+father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride--"
+
+"Now who is fierce?" she cried. And then, like lightning: "Will you
+raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?"
+
+"You know I will not," I protested, so gravely that she laughed again,
+though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew
+not, in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur
+John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age." Then she
+sobered quickly and added this: "And yet I fear that this is what my
+father fears."
+
+I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or
+that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine
+enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause
+to dread me.
+
+"He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough," she added.
+
+I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.
+
+"Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly
+out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my
+father's house--or rather in the house that was my father's. But that
+was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to
+think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's,
+certainly; but 'twas never mine."
+
+"And yet--and yet it should be yours, John Ireton." She said it bravely,
+with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.
+
+"'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides
+to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard
+Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery."
+
+She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay.
+After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was
+in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them
+shine like stars.
+
+"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.
+
+'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and
+I could not say it.
+
+"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend--as I am his."
+
+"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you
+would have it?"
+
+My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great
+oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding
+in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her
+unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them
+was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode
+as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of
+his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner
+born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the
+jog-trot of his beast.
+
+I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her,
+these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not
+speak until they came so near that I could make them out.
+
+"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.
+And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend
+to Dick did I not--"
+
+She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to
+me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance
+on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some
+babblement of voices, though not the words.
+
+"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."
+
+She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had
+thought her gone--gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the
+factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I
+had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.
+
+"You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other,
+Monsieur John?"
+
+"Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have
+been hoping there was no other."
+
+"But if I say there may be?"
+
+My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously
+to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another--
+
+"Margery, come hither where I may see you." And when she stood before me
+like a bidden child: "Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?"
+
+But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive
+she fell a-laughing.
+
+"What impudence!" she cried. "_Ma foi_! You should borrow Pere
+Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.
+But not before."
+
+But still I pressed her.
+
+"Tell me, Margery."
+
+She tossed her head and would not look at me. "Dick Jennifer is but a
+boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And a soldier."
+
+The sickness in my heart became a fire.
+
+"O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!"
+
+All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place
+was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have
+passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.
+
+"Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or
+mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only
+knew--if I dared tell you--"
+
+But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.
+She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.
+
+"Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though
+he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to
+put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I
+shall not stay to listen, sir."
+
+With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her
+hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.
+
+"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me
+mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."
+
+I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her
+answer came. And this is what she said:
+
+"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis
+Falconnet asked me to marry him. I--I hope you do feel better, Captain
+Ireton."
+
+And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me
+to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND
+
+
+It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the
+factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and
+sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would
+curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my
+enemy.
+
+I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby
+Hundred--indeed, I saw them daily from my window--and Darius would be
+telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the
+south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have
+told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm,
+pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her
+lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how
+to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed--knew and raged afresh at my own
+impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of
+this devil.
+
+Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered
+love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call
+aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more
+downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at
+the mercy of this fiend.
+
+I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift--some
+winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well
+this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than
+handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and
+soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power
+of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will
+for that which he was not.
+
+As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart
+from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity
+or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed
+after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep
+the scale from tipping--all were as one to him, or to the Francis
+Falconnet I knew.
+
+And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love
+would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce
+desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood;
+but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to
+Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman
+volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might
+brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.
+
+It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us
+in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and
+grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless
+baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his
+fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.
+
+And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that
+her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But
+there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer
+captain with the winning way was of the _haute noblesse_, and he could
+make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you
+may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump
+cards to play against the absent lover.
+
+So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days--the first in
+many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky
+was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness
+followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was
+this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and
+lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the
+good priest known to me.
+
+Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I
+have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a
+friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of
+men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me
+at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.
+
+"A truly sweet young demoiselle," he said, by way of foreword, no sooner
+was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this
+text I grew to know and love him.
+
+He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and
+features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as
+Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not
+tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist
+with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of
+the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white
+hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely
+chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far
+older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among
+the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.
+
+I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.
+
+"But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness,"
+I ventured, when all was said. "'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of
+parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are
+but savages, as they were."
+
+At this he smiled and shook his head. _"Non, Monsieur_, not so. You are
+a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. _Mais, mon ami_,
+they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are
+far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and
+faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way."
+
+I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book
+called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
+youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
+when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
+they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."
+
+"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must
+confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
+them, too."
+
+From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
+interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
+dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
+telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
+forest.
+
+Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
+north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
+thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
+bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
+Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
+unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
+his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
+Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
+take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
+army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.
+
+On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
+of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
+and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
+naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
+might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.
+
+As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
+must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
+was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
+two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
+Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
+well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
+and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
+waiting for some messenger from the south.
+
+I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
+more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the
+news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.
+
+"I go and come through all this borderland," he said, when I had asked
+him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, "but it was mam'selle's
+message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and
+I would journey far to see her."
+
+I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely
+Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.
+
+"But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!" said I.
+
+His look forgave the protest in the words.
+
+"Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?"
+
+Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet
+I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this
+same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.
+
+"But how--I do not understand how that can be," I stammered. "Surely,
+she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that
+is--"
+
+The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.
+
+"Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain
+Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I
+think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her
+child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave
+his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he
+kept it."
+
+"Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the
+terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu.
+The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in
+Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob."
+
+His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. "The time has not yet passed,"
+he said, gently. "I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither,
+hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in
+hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found
+me."
+
+This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said
+at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how
+perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he
+rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess
+the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to
+that--her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her
+sending for the priest--the madness of my love for her was as naught
+compared to that anger which seized and racked me.
+
+I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
+grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
+keen to suffer at the end.
+
+A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
+the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
+it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
+call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
+and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
+core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
+and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
+candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
+doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier,"
+she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.
+
+From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
+So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
+before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
+to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
+to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
+side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!
+
+What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
+thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and
+later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot
+fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
+that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do
+know.
+
+The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
+nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
+and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
+the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
+myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.
+
+With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
+might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
+the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
+as with the strength of ten.
+
+Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
+day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
+candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks,
+you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains--the which I had. His
+place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew
+no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected,
+and that some air of mystery was abroad.
+
+When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a
+thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I
+drank a second cup of wine,--'twas old madeira of my father's
+laying-in,--and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not
+yield it.
+
+It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan,
+would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the
+weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone
+bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a
+candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken
+clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and
+found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.
+
+It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in
+the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done
+the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my
+knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me
+strength to break his neck across it.
+
+At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the
+window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the
+front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them,
+I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.
+
+The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the
+oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere
+of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal,
+though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for
+silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling
+mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition--old as man, for
+aught I know--of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I
+laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my
+father's roof within the compass of the night.
+
+Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin
+forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I
+heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.
+Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
+For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
+remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
+bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
+become fiercely debatable.
+
+It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
+hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
+looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
+seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
+black beneath my window.
+
+It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
+sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
+sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
+words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
+and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
+the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.
+
+"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
+a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of
+how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
+the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.
+
+At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
+broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.
+
+Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
+door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
+braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
+was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
+what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
+enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
+chance of interruption.
+
+I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
+behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
+not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
+know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
+red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
+me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
+birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
+nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
+task to do and I would do it.
+
+My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
+it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
+had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
+vigilance.
+
+I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
+in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
+been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
+solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
+whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.
+
+"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.
+
+"A friend," said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
+of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.
+
+"By God, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for
+he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to
+scant his breath for shoutings.
+
+It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too
+hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do--or seek to
+do--his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so
+it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs--and
+when I rose he rose not with me.
+
+With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to
+knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen
+at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a
+pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the
+nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from
+within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper's
+oath.
+
+I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some
+foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests,
+no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it,
+and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.
+Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I
+have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The
+other two were strangers.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART
+
+
+Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in
+upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would
+have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the
+midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay
+and listen.
+
+It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in
+years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and
+garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of
+foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.
+
+"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not
+old Roger's son?"
+
+"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glass
+again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever
+knew.
+
+"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas some
+half-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in the
+Royal Scots."
+
+Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service and
+levanted to the Continent."
+
+The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.
+
+"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about
+him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would
+stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they
+told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,
+and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him
+she shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le pere aux tetes rondes, lui-meme!
+Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!
+ha!"
+
+Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred
+cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than
+"roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more
+because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,
+and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be
+kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on
+and listened with the better grace.
+
+"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jester
+who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.
+
+Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned
+to Gilbert Stair.
+
+"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, passing the question on.
+
+At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,
+too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the
+reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's
+father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its
+simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray
+eyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the
+mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him
+that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew
+not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her
+paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched
+the weak chin to a hair.
+
+"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" he
+quavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His title was well
+hanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!"
+
+A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant
+outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.
+
+"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel
+Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tis
+likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come
+into his own again."
+
+"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle
+afresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he
+came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."
+
+My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie in
+words.
+
+"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached
+for special duty.'"
+
+"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"
+
+Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dear
+Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.
+Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;
+'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assure
+you!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen upon
+me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking
+he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."
+
+Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, Sir
+Francis? You've promised that, you know."
+
+I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this
+little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.
+
+"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had
+what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him
+here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.
+Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--this
+to the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your title will be well quieted,
+Mr. Stair."
+
+At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till
+the bottles reeled.
+
+"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimped
+here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
+his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
+If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
+peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."
+
+The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
+had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
+door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
+that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."
+
+Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
+business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
+Falconnet who gave the toast.
+
+"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,
+Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"
+
+"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
+better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
+this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same
+old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
+you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
+ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the
+wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
+them."
+
+By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
+I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
+Captain Damare, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
+savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
+placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
+king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
+in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
+learn, he was a man for us to fear.
+
+"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
+And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will
+not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
+
+It was Falconnet who answered.
+
+"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
+your news, Captain."
+
+"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailing
+in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to
+dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest with
+my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border
+settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
+
+I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met
+with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known
+him. Then I heard the baronet say:
+
+"But yet the thing is done?"
+
+"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after
+which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And
+that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
+Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
+Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
+
+There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke
+in upon it shrilly.
+
+"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting from
+his chair. "'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know it
+well, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel
+militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
+
+But the captain put him down in brief.
+
+"Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tis
+hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at
+best--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest
+in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--I
+would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord's
+commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
+
+The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumbly
+like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too
+violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what
+double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely
+something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
+
+So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways
+and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular
+orders.
+
+"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota
+will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
+will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
+
+"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
+
+"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
+
+Falconnet's oath was of impatience.
+
+"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
+necks. The country is alive with rebels."
+
+Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
+route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
+partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
+horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
+under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
+prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
+
+But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
+within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
+factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
+subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
+gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
+drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
+powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
+map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
+Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
+
+At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what
+this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the
+frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us
+knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men were
+planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be
+done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led
+by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the
+over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a
+junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk
+and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
+
+It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of
+any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought
+upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay
+before me.
+
+The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
+
+But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task
+of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking
+the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was
+nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region
+at the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man for
+self-defense?
+
+At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would
+know how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'd
+find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to
+this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick before
+the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the
+half-score miles to Jennifer House.
+
+Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should
+last--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which
+again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I
+would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second
+thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge
+of the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking the
+time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set
+some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the
+convoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedient
+seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught
+and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
+
+So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and
+glare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers and
+the bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. If
+I could make a shift to rob them of this map--
+
+It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to
+take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and
+the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon
+their figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and the
+captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he
+was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw
+not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
+
+My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within
+and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I
+might snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I
+had come.
+
+So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching
+hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost
+my grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the wooden
+shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling
+the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the
+dead.
+
+As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs
+flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding
+figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I
+had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the
+night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon
+horse-holder.
+
+"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer,
+put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,
+while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious
+scrap of parchment in his hand.
+
+Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattered
+down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by
+my doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but
+tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I
+had it safe.
+
+You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what
+followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little
+stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now
+to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain
+hung in air and sought his foothold.
+
+With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
+When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it
+tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged
+upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through
+the gaping doorway.
+
+I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with the
+point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the
+oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the
+saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till
+the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently
+by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with
+the sword at the man upon his back.
+
+It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust
+he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
+Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the
+night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon
+shot to crush my skull.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY
+
+
+Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will
+tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on
+the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to
+give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my
+captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and
+feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and
+aching from their buffetings.
+
+How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this
+harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could
+not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung
+pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses
+tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.
+
+The scene within the great fore-room of the house had been shifted, too.
+A sentry was pacing back and forth before the door--a Hessian grenadier
+by the size and shako of him; and when the two trooper bailiffs thrust
+me in, and I had winked and blinked my eyes accustomed to the
+candle-light, I saw the table had been swept of its bottles and glasses,
+and around it, sitting as in council, were some half-score officers of
+the British light-horse with their colonel at the head.
+
+As it chanced, this was my first sight near at hand of that British
+commander whose name in after years the patriot mothers spoke to fright
+their children. He did not look a monster. As I recall him now, he was a
+short, square-bodied man, younger by some years than myself, and yet
+with an old campaigner's head well set upon aggressive shoulders. His
+eyes were black and ferrety; and his face, well seasoned by the Carolina
+sun, was swart as any Arab's. A man, I thought, who could be
+gentle-harsh or harsh-revengeful, as the mood should prompt; who could
+make well-turned courtier compliments to a lady and damn a trooper in
+the self-same breath.
+
+This was that Colonel Banastre Tarleton who gave no quarter to
+surrendered men; and when I looked into the sloe-black eyes I saw in
+them for me a waiting gibbet.
+
+"So!" he rapped out, when I was haled before him. "You're the spying
+rebel captain, eh? Are you alive enough to hang?"
+
+His lack of courtesy rasped so sorely that I must needs give place to
+wrath and answer sharply that there was small doubt of it, since I could
+stand and curse him.
+
+He scowled at that and cursed me back again as heartily as any
+fishwife. Then suddenly he changed his tune.
+
+"They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
+loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
+die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?"
+
+I said it would, most surely.
+
+He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
+the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
+the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
+think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
+the midst.
+
+"By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!" he swore. "You rebels are
+all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!"
+
+"Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
+Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
+the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me."
+
+"If that is your last word--But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
+over."
+
+"It needs not an hour nor a minute," I replied. "If I knew aught about
+the Continental army--which I do not--I'd see you hanged in your own
+stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
+marvel greatly--"
+
+"At what?" he cut in rudely.
+
+"At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
+straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
+'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you."
+
+He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
+sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.
+
+While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
+look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
+without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
+offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
+chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
+shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
+and then of apprehension.
+
+As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
+ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
+and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
+older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
+pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
+niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.
+
+She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
+out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure of a man behind her; a man I
+guessed in jealous wrath to be the baronet--a reasonless suspicion,
+since the volunteer captain would certainly have made his presence known
+when his colonel had called for him. But while my heart was yet afire my
+lady moved aside as if to have a better sight of us below; and then I
+saw it was the priest behind her.
+
+While I was watching her, and we were waiting yet upon the
+aide-de-camp's return, there was a stir without, and when it reached the
+door the sentry challenged. Some confab followed, and I overheard enough
+to tell me that a scouting party had come in, bringing a prisoner. The
+colonel bade me stand aside, and passed the word to fetch the prisoner
+before him. When the thing was done I set my teeth upon a groan. For it
+was Richard Jennifer.
+
+Luckily, he did not single me out among the bystanders, being fresh come
+from the night without to the glare of candle-light within; and while
+the swart-faced colonel plied him with questions I had a chance to look
+him up and down. Though his arm was still in its sling, he was seemingly
+the better of his wound. There was a glow of health and strength
+returning in cheek and eye, and I thought him handsomer than ever what
+time he stood forth boldly and fronted down the bullying colonel.
+
+Knowing the Jennifer stock and its fine scorn of subterfuge, I feared it
+would go hard with Richard; and so, indeed, it had gone, lacking a word
+in season from an enemy. When Tarleton would have made him choose
+between the taking of the king's oath and captivity in the hulks at
+Charleston, a burly Hessian captain at the table spoke the word in
+season.
+
+"_Verdammt!_ mine Colonel; I vill know dis Mr. Yennifer. He is a prave
+yoong schalavags, and he is not gone out mit der rebels. Give him to me
+for mine plunders."
+
+The colonel laughed and showed his teeth. Having one man to hang he
+could afford to be lenient with another.
+
+"What will you do with him, Captain Lauswoulter? By the look of him he'd
+make but indifferent sausage-meat."
+
+"Vat shall I do mit him? I shall make him mine best bows and send him
+home, py Gott! Ve did had some liddle troubles mit der cards, and ven
+mine foot was slipped on dis _verdammt_ grease-grass, he did not run me
+t'rough so like he might."
+
+"Oh; an affair of honor? Well, we'll count that in his favor. Take him
+away, Trelawny, and quarter yourself and twenty men upon him at Jennifer
+House. You have your parole, Mr. Jennifer; but by the Lord, if you break
+it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
+ridge-pole."
+
+Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
+had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
+bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.
+
+Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
+and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
+seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
+in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
+and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
+as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.
+
+While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
+aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
+and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
+was not yet in from posting out the sentries.
+
+I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
+that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
+to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
+not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
+hear in brief.
+
+"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
+time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
+baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
+within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
+know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."
+
+I made so sure that I should hang in any case that it seemed foolish to
+answer, and so I saved my breath. Withal he was the terror of our
+Southland, this tyrant colonel gave me time to consider; and while he
+waited, grim and silent, the candles on the table guttered and ran down,
+and the dim light failed till I could no longer see the face of her I
+loved framed in the archway of the stair.
+
+I thought it hard that I had seen my last of her sweet face thus through
+thickening shadows, as a dream might fade. Nevertheless, I would be glad
+that I had seen her thus, since otherwise, I thought, I must have gone
+without this last or any other sight of her.
+
+It was while I was still straining my eyes for one more glimpse of her,
+and while the court room silence deepened dense upon us like the
+shadows, that Colonel Tarleton signed to those who guarded me. A hand
+was laid upon my shoulder, but when I would have turned to go with them
+a woman's cry cut sharp into the stillness. Then, before any one could
+say a word or think a thought, my dauntless little lady stood beside me,
+her eyes alight and all her glorious beauty heightened in a blaze of
+generous emotion.
+
+"For shame! Colonel Tarleton," she cried. "Do you come thus into my
+father's house and take a wounded guest and hang him? You say he is a
+spy, but that he can not be, for he has lain abed in this same house a
+month or more. You shall not hang him!"
+
+At this there was a mighty stir about the table, as you may guess; and
+some would smile, and some would snuff the candles for a better sight of
+her sweet face. And through it all, the while my heart went near to
+bursting at this fresh proof of her most fearless loyalty, I ground my
+teeth in wrath that all those men should look their fill and say by wink
+and nod and covert smile that this were somewhat more than hostess
+loyalty.
+
+But it was the colonel's mocking smile that lashed me sharpest; his
+smile and what he said; and yet not that so much as what he left to be
+inferred.
+
+"Ha! How is this, Mistress Margery? Do you keep open house for the
+king's enemies? That spells treason, my dear young lady, and hath an
+ugly look for you, besides."
+
+"It should have no look at all, save that of hospitality, sir," she
+countered, bravely. "Surely I may plead for justice to a wounded man who
+was, and is, my father's guest?"
+
+"And yet he is a spy, and spies must hang."
+
+"He is no spy."
+
+The colonel's bow made but a mock of true politeness.
+
+"You should not make me contradict a lady, Mistress Margery. 'Tis
+evident you have not all his confidence. He was captured red-handed in
+the act at yonder window, listening to that which he may never know and
+live to prate about. Besides, he killed a sentry for his chance to
+listen, and for that I'd hang him if he were my own father's guest."
+
+So much he said as mild as if he had not left his reading of the law to
+figure in our annals as King George's butcher. Then in a sudden gust of
+rage he turned upon the priest, cursing him brutally and threatening
+vengeance for his bringing of the lady to the court room.
+
+My brave one stood a moment, shocked as she had warrant for. Then,
+before the priest or I or any one could stop her, she ran to throw
+herself upon her knees at Colonel Tarleton's feet--to kneel and plead
+for me as I would gladly have died a thousand deaths rather than have
+her plead; for life for me, or if not that, at least for some brief
+respite that the priest might shrive me.
+
+And in the end she won the respite, though I did think it far too dearly
+bought. When he granted it the colonel lifted her and took her hand,
+bowing low over it with courtly deference. "For your sake, Mistress
+Margery, it shall be put off till morning," he said; then gave the
+order: At dawn they would march me out and hang me, and I would best be
+ready. For later than the sunrise of a new day the king himself might
+not delay my taking off.
+
+"You know too much, my cursing Captain," was his parting word. "Were it
+not for Mistress Margery and my promise, you should not keep the breath
+to tell it over night."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HOW A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR
+
+
+Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that
+young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet's second
+in the duel. Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep
+my own room for the night. I had expected manacles and a roommate guard
+at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both. When he had me
+safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back
+and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the
+window from below, and so left me.
+
+There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars. What
+with the night's adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped
+on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may
+well suppose. For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or
+passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their
+pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.
+
+So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my
+lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking
+that the respite bought by my sweet lady's humbling was more dearly
+bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and
+tree without this interval of waiting.
+
+To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came. He was a
+good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he
+would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of
+praise and love. For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so
+sure and near that all the air was growing chill and lifeless at its
+presence, he was a ready help in time of need. If I were "heretic" to
+him, I swear I knew it not for aught he said or did; and though I
+trusted that when my time was come I should stand forth with some small
+simple-hearted show of courage, yet when he went away I felt I was the
+stronger for his coming. And this, mark you, though I was still
+unshriven, and he had never named the churchly rite to me.
+
+When he was gone I fell to wearing out the time afoot; and, lest you
+think me harder than I was, it may be said that while I did not make
+confession to the kindly priest, I hope I tried to make my peace with
+God in some such simpler fashion as our forebears did. 'Twas none so
+great a matter, for one who lives a soldier's life must needs be ripe
+for plucking hastily.
+
+But in the final casting of accounts there was an item written down in
+red, and one in black, and these would not be scored across for all the
+travail of a soul departing. The one in black was bitter sorrow for the
+fate from which I might not live to save my loved one; the one in red
+was this; that I should die and carry hence the knowledge that might
+else nip the Indian onfall in the bud.
+
+No sooner was the priest away than I began to upbraid myself because I
+had not told him of this British-Indian murder plan. And yet on second
+thought 'twas clear that it had been but a poor shifting of the burden
+to weaker shoulders; and thankless, too, for Tarleton would be sure to
+put him on the question-rack to make him tell of all that passed between
+us.
+
+As I had let him go, he would have naught to tell, and so was safe,
+where otherwise he might be hanged or buried in the hulks for knowing
+what I knew. No, it were best he knew it not; but how was I to rid me of
+this burden?--of this and of that other laid upon me for my love?
+
+The question asked itself a many a time, and was as often answerless,
+before there came a stir without and voices in the corridor. It was the
+changing of the guard, I guessed, and so it proved, since presently I
+heard the clanking of the officer's sword, and double footfalls
+minishing into silence.
+
+The sentry newly come paced back and forth to a low-hummed quick-step of
+his own, bestirring himself as one who, roused but now from sleep,
+would wake himself and be alert. He made more noise than did the other,
+and that is why I marked it when the footfalls ceased abruptly. A moment
+afterward the bar was lifted cautiously from its socket, the latch
+clicked gently, and the door swung open. I looked, and must needs look
+again to make assurance sure. For on the threshold stood my lady
+Margery, and just behind her some broad figure of a woman whom I knew
+for her stout Norman tiring-maid.
+
+She gave me little time for any word of welcome or of deprecation. While
+still I stood amazed she dragged the woman in with her and closed the
+door. At that I found my tongue.
+
+"Margery! Why have you come?" I spoke in French, and she was quick to
+lay a finger on her lip.
+
+"Speak to me in English, if you please," she whispered. "Jeanne knows
+nothing, and she need not know. But you ask why I come: could I do less
+than come, dear friend?"
+
+I had always marveled that she could be so mocking hard at times, and at
+other times--as now--so soft and gentle. And though I thought it cruel
+that I should have to fight my battle for the losing of her over again,
+I had not the heart to chide her.
+
+"You could have done much less, dear lady," I said, taking her hands in
+mine; "much less, and still be blameless. You have done too much for me
+already. I would you had not done so much, I would to God I had been
+hanged before you went upon your knees to that--"
+
+She freed one hand and laid a finger on my lip--nay, it was her palm,
+and if I took a dying man's fair leave and kissed it softly, I think she
+knew it not.
+
+"Hush!" she commanded. "Is this a time to harbor bitter thoughts? I
+thought you might have other things to say to me, Monsieur John."
+
+"There is no other thing that I may say."
+
+"Not anything at all?"
+
+"Naught but a parting hope for you. I hope you will be true and loyal to
+yourself, Margery _mia_."
+
+"To myself? I do not understand."
+
+"I think you do--I think you must."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+I turned it over more than once in my mind if I should tell her all I
+had feared; should tell her how I came to kill a man and was fair set to
+kill another had I found a wedding afoot in the great fore-room. I could
+not bring myself to do it, and yet I thought it would go hard with me if
+I should leave her still unwarned.
+
+"If I should try to make you understand, you will be angry, as you were
+before."
+
+The wicker chair was close beside the table and she sat down. And when
+she spoke she had her hands tight-clasped across her knee and would not
+look at me.
+
+"Is it--about--Sir Francis?"
+
+"It is," said I, pausing once more upon the brink of full confession.
+
+She waited patiently for me to speak further; waited and let me fight it
+out in slow pacings up and down before her chair. Without, the night was
+calm and still, and through the opened casement came the measured beat
+of footfalls on the gravel where the outer sentry kept his watch beneath
+the window. Within, the single candle battled feebly with the gloom and
+lighted naught for me save my dear lady's face, pensive now and saintly
+sweet as it had been that morning when I had dwelt upon it the while she
+knew it not. And in the background stood the sleepy tire-woman, giving
+no sign of life save now and then a tortured yawn behind her hand.
+
+I think my lady must have known how hard it was for me to speak, for,
+when the silence had grown overlong, she said, gently: "I bought these
+flying minutes of the sentry, Monsieur John. Will you not use them?"
+
+"If I should say the thing I ought to say, you'll think the minutes
+dearly bought, I fear."
+
+"No, that I shall not, if it will ease your mind."
+
+"Then tell me why you sent for Father Matthieu."
+
+The light was dim, as I have said, yet I could see the faint flush
+spread from neck to cheek.
+
+"You are not of the Church, Monsieur John. You would not understand if I
+should tell you."
+
+"I think I understand without your telling. You said Sir Francis
+Falconnet had asked for you."
+
+"'Twas you who drove me to say it."
+
+"Because I tried to warn you?"
+
+"Because you would be vengeful when you should have been forgiving."
+
+"'Twas not revenge, just then, though while I live I shall have ample
+cause to hate this man."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"It was love; love for you, and--and Richard Jennifer."
+
+She rose, and I could see her eyes ashine for all the half-gloom of the
+candle-light.
+
+"You are a loyal friend!" she said, and there was that within the words
+to make me glad, whatever fate the dawn should have in store for me.
+"You always think of others first; you think of others now, when--when
+death--Oh, Monsieur John! what can I do for you? Say quick! The man is
+coming to the door!"
+
+"Now I have told you this, there is but one other thing, Margery dear;
+one little thing that will not let me die in peace. If I might have ten
+words with Richard Jennifer--"
+
+She left me in a fever-flutter of excitement, whipped to the door, and
+had a word with him who stood without. I heard the chink of coin, and
+then she hastened back to me, all eagerness and tremulous impatience.
+
+"Tell me--tell me instantly what I must do. I am not afraid. Shall I
+ride down to Jennifer House and fetch Dick here?"
+
+"He is a prisoner, and if he were not, they would not let him see me.
+Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet--God help me,
+Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of
+helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a
+man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Write it down for me and Dick shall have it.
+Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! _O Sancta Maria, mater.
+Dei_--"
+
+The low impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as
+I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There
+were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in
+my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled
+parchment map snatched and hidden when Captain Stuart had winced and
+dropped it at the bidding of the whistling sword about his ears.
+
+How it was they had not searched me for it, I know not; though haply the
+captain did not guess how he had lost it. Be that as it might, I had it
+safe, and Dick should have it safe, and use it, too, to some good
+purpose, as I fondly hoped.
+
+You'd hardly think from the slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I
+could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a
+niggard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the
+margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the pricking
+out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the
+flourish to my name, my eager little lady seized the pounce-box, sanded
+me the heavy trailings of the quill, snatched and hid the parchment in
+her bosom, and was gone.
+
+And but for this; that I heard the door-latch click behind her, and then
+the heavy wooden bar fall into place, I might have thought the
+happenings of the hour the unsubstantial fancies of a dream.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+HOW A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF
+
+
+Although I could not hope to know the outcome of this desperate cast to
+speed the warning to the over-mountain settlements--could never live to
+know it, as I thought--I screened the candle and stood beside the open
+window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound
+to gather some encouragement. For sure, I reasoned, if Margery's
+messenger should fail to pass the sentries there would be clamor enough
+to tell me of it.
+
+So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was
+space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of
+success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm
+that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough
+that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion
+was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the
+bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in
+sleep--I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering
+fires--I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then
+was any messenger of Margery's to pass the lines, or, passing them, to
+come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a
+prisoner in all but name?
+
+Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while
+the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart
+in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the
+bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I
+had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger
+were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the
+fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was
+sent,--I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my
+correspondent,--both Margery and Dick would be involved.
+
+'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we
+seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the
+thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in
+silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan
+moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor
+crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding
+abreast--a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse
+sandwiched in between, a woman.
+
+You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she
+had done--this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any
+cost. Having no messenger she could trust--she knew it well when she had
+promised me--she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard
+that would have daunted many a man.
+
+I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times
+that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.
+Her captors passed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and
+grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some
+with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her
+and to jeer and laugh. At length--it seemed an age to me--an officer
+appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her
+horse and led into the house.
+
+Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight
+out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At
+that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never
+prayed before that God would grant me this one boon--to stand beside her
+in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all
+that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she
+went, or what the message was she carried.
+
+Yours is a skeptic age, my dears, and you have learned to scoff at
+things you do not understand. But, so long as I shall live, I must
+believe that agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it
+wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the
+sentry's challenge, and then a quick unbarring of the door. I turned
+upon my heel to face a young ensign come with two men at his back to
+take me to the colonel.
+
+They bound me well and strongly with many wrappings of stout cord before
+they led me down. Nor must you think me broken-spirited because I let
+them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to die
+unmanacled; but now I suffered gladly this little, seeing I had made my
+dear lady suffer so greatly.
+
+When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I
+had prayed God they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain
+to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the
+place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they
+had never offered her a chair.
+
+The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and
+Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid
+to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and
+that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust
+me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came
+and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's
+eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more
+beautiful than I had ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear
+the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be
+expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame
+and agony.
+
+When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our
+fresh offense.
+
+"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your
+treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"
+
+"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly,
+thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet
+I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my
+getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with
+your sentry."
+
+"By God, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered
+with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but
+not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame,
+Mistress Margery Stair?"
+
+Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but
+never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment
+she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate
+deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a
+dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.
+
+"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.
+'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."
+
+The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.
+
+"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or
+so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you
+do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."
+
+As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming
+red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to
+clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still
+have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and,
+when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an
+accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and
+at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his
+friend.
+
+For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting
+with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And
+on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy
+liar.
+
+"A likely story, that!" he scoffed. "Next you will say she knew not what
+this message was."
+
+"I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it."
+
+I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of
+tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see?
+He has the letter!"
+
+I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood
+the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.
+
+"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and
+does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make
+a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have
+her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."
+
+While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of
+inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it
+quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at
+her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow
+wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and
+drew the bow and sped the shaft.
+
+"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel
+Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love
+there went a duty."
+
+"A duty, say you? How is that?"
+
+I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye
+again.
+
+"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my
+wife."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH
+
+
+For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to
+glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close
+beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by
+the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me
+to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by the lie.
+
+But as it was, I faced him down; and winning him, won all. There was a
+muttered oath from Falconnet, a tremulous cry of rage from where her
+father stood; and then I sought my lady's eyes to read my sentence in
+them.
+
+She gave me but a glance, and though I tried as I had never tried before
+to read her meaning it was hid from me. But this I marked; that she did
+draw aside from me, and that her face was cold and still, and that her
+lips were pressed together as if not all nor any should ever make her
+speak again.
+
+At this sharp crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death
+and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly,
+stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and
+once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he
+broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert Stair and then
+at Falconnet.
+
+"God save us! I give you joy, Mr. Stair, and you, Sir Francis. These two
+have duped you bravely. By heavens! Sir Frank; 'twas you who should have
+had the sword thrust in the duel. In that event you might have stood in
+Captain Ireton's shoes, and so had the priest fetched for your benefit."
+Then he turned to Margery with a bow that had no touch of mockery in it.
+"I crave your pardon, Madam; I knew not you were pleading for your
+husband's life an hour ago. It grieves me that I may not spare him to
+you longer than the night, but war is cruel at its best."
+
+She stood like any statue done in cold Carrara while he spoke; and when
+she made no sign he gave the word to recommit me.
+
+"Take him away, Lieutenant Tybee, and see he has a bribe-proof man this
+time to keep him company. Madam Ireton, I'll put you on your honor: you
+may have access to him, but there must be no messages carried in or out.
+To your quarters, gentlemen. We must ride far and hard to-morrow."
+
+When his final word had set her free, my frozen maiden came to life and
+ran to throw herself in helpless sobbings, not upon her father, as you
+would think, but upon the good priest. And it was Father Matthieu who
+led her, still crying softly, out of the throng and up the low stair;
+and now I marked that all the rough soldiery stood aside and made way
+for her with never a man among them to scoff or sneer or point a gibe.
+
+At her going, Tybee drew his sword and cut the cord that bound me.
+
+"These youngling cubs are over-cautious, Captain Ireton. We shall not
+make it harder for each other than we must," he said, with bluff good
+nature. And then: "Will you lead the way to your room, sir?"--this to
+give the youngling cub another lesson, I suppose.
+
+I walked beside him to the stair, and when I stumbled, being weak and
+spent, he took my arm and steadied me, and I did think it kindly done.
+At my own door he gave me precedence again, saying, with a touch of the
+grateful Old World courtesy, "After you, sir," and standing aside to let
+me enter first. When we were both within he touched upon the colonel's
+mandate.
+
+"I must obey my orders, Captain Ireton, but by your good leave I shall
+not lock you up with any trooper; I'll stay with you myself."
+
+I thought this still more kindly than aught he had done before, and so I
+told him. But he put it off lightly.
+
+"'Tis little enough any one can do for you, my friend, but I will do
+that little as I can. You are like to have a visitor, I take it; if you
+have, I'm sure 'twill be a comfort if your body-guard can be stone
+blind and deaf."
+
+So saying, he dragged the big wicker chair into the window-bay, planted
+himself deep within it with his back to all the room, and so left me to
+my own devices.
+
+Being spent enough to sleep beneath the shadow of a gibbet, I threw
+myself full-length upon the bed and was, I think, adrift upon the ebb
+tide of exhaustion and forgetfulness when once again the shifting of the
+wooden door-bar roused me. I rose up quickly, but Tybee was before me.
+There was some low-voiced conference at the door; then Tybee came to me.
+
+"'Tis Mr. Gilbert Stair," he said. "He has permission from the colonel
+and insists that he must see you _solus_. I'll take your word and leave
+you, if you like."
+
+At first I hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late
+to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed
+it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear
+lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had
+told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow in
+the morning.
+
+"Yes, yes; for God's sake let him in, Mr. Tybee!" I burst out. "I am
+fair crazed with weariness, and had forgot. 'Tis most important, I do
+assure you."
+
+The thing was done at once, and before I knew it I was alone with the
+old man who, though he was my supplanter, was also Margery's father. He
+entered cautiously, shielding his bedroom candle with his hand and
+peering over it to make me out, as if his venturing in were not
+unperilous. And I marked that when he put the candle down upon the
+table, he edged away and felt behind him for the door as if to make sure
+of his retreat in case of need.
+
+"Sit down, Captain Ireton; sit down, I beg of you," he said, in his
+thin, rasping treble. And when I had obeyed: "I think you must know what
+I've come for, Captain Ireton?"
+
+I said I could guess; and he began again, volubly now, as if to have it
+over in the shortest space.
+
+"'Twas not a gentlemanly thing for you to do, Captain Ireton--this
+marrying of a foolish girl out of hand while you were here a guest; and
+as for the priest that did it, I--I'll have him hanged before the army
+leaves, I promise you. But now 'tis done, I hope ye're prepared to make
+the best of it?"
+
+I saw at once that his daughter had not yet confided in him; that he was
+still entangled in my lie. So I thought it well to probe him deeper
+while I might.
+
+"What would you call 'the best' if I may ask?" said I, growing the
+cooler with some better seeing of the way ahead.
+
+"The marriage settlements!" he cried shrilly, coming to the point at
+once, as any miser would. "'Tis the merest matter of form, as ye may
+say, for your title to Appleby Hundred is well burnt out, I promise you.
+But for the decent look of it you might make over your quitclaim to your
+wife."
+
+"Aye, truly; so I might."
+
+"And so you should, sir; that you should, ye miserable, spying
+runag"--he choked and coughed behind his hand and then began again
+without the epithets. "'Tis the very least ye can do for her now, when
+you have the rope fair around your curs--ahem--your--your rebel neck.
+Only for the form's sake, to be sure, ye understand, for she'd inherit
+after you in any case."
+
+I saw his drift at last, and, not caring to spare him, sped the shaft of
+truth and let it find the joint in his harness.
+
+"'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not
+my wife."
+
+If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for
+the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.
+
+"Wha--what's that ye say?" he piped in shrillest cadence. "Not married?
+Then you--you--"
+
+"I lied to save her honor--that was all. A wife might do the thing she
+did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see
+and hear."
+
+For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his
+astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and
+down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he
+shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with
+here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a
+chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the
+look of one struck with a mortal sickness.
+
+"I think--I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain
+Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.
+
+"Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can
+pay," said I.
+
+"Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now--"
+
+"You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly."
+
+Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with
+certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.
+
+"Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River,
+and a major in the Virginia line," I answered, wondering how my cousin
+once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next
+question dispelled the mystery.
+
+"If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?"
+
+"As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to
+devise."
+
+"True; and yet"--he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy.
+
+"Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair," said I.
+
+"'Tis this," he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. "You've
+claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die
+to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think--I
+think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth."
+
+If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a
+secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I
+should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I
+thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his
+madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to
+cut the knot of all entanglements.
+
+As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since
+a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never
+dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the
+world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of
+it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. Dick would love her none the
+less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And
+if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor
+double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby
+Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in
+all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the
+Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with
+greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could
+help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a
+while.
+
+So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you,
+I gave my host his answer.
+
+"I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If
+you can make your daughter understand--"
+
+"The jade will do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will
+drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot.
+And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her
+legatee residuary?"
+
+At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle
+for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his title to my
+father's lands--a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was
+enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to
+think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty
+miser.
+
+"I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean," I said.
+"But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said
+a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event."
+
+"True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form." He rose and
+hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand
+played a rattling tattoo on the latch. "I--I'll go and have the papers
+drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word
+that you will sign them?"
+
+"Aye; they shall be signed."
+
+He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the
+lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room
+without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own
+communings.
+
+These were not altogether of assurance. Though I had promised readily
+enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my
+lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some
+hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to
+fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property
+and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he
+said--that she would do as she was bid--I thought I knew her temper well
+enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she
+put her will against the world, the world would never move her.
+
+'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard
+some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the
+wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at
+the door I stood apart and turned my back.
+
+When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a
+parchment that might have been a ducal title deed for size, stood
+Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of
+them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the
+corner Tybee stood to keep the door.
+
+I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them,
+strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She
+gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to
+what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last,
+under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was
+cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest,
+looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.
+
+It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his
+predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature.
+Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish
+pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.
+
+"I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this
+matter ripens further, Mr. Stair," I said.
+
+My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the
+window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so
+little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.
+
+"What has your father told you, Margery?" I asked.
+
+"He tells me nothing that I care to know."
+
+"But he has told you what you must do?"
+
+"Yes." She looked with eyes that saw me not.
+
+"And you are here to do it of your own free will?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Yet it must be done."
+
+"So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die."
+
+"'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of
+our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the
+saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some
+short while till you can change it for a better."
+
+Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.
+
+"Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the
+morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not
+thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way."
+
+"See what comes of tampering with the truth," she said, and I could see
+her short lip curl with scorn. "Why should you lie and lie again, when
+any one could see that it must come to this--or worse?"
+
+"I saw it not," I said. "But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's
+need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet
+other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."
+
+"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir,
+when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole
+again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"
+
+"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that
+you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."
+
+"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing,
+to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?
+You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"
+
+"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in
+this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that
+if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."
+
+She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion
+shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it
+cut me like a knife.
+
+"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said
+that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and
+they are waiting."
+
+I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not
+suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside
+me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage
+settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I
+bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of
+mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.
+
+I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two
+plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never
+thought to smile again.
+
+"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation
+act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I
+shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own
+house. Give me the pen."
+
+'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer
+for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though
+not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.
+
+When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him;
+the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full
+forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his
+love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And
+here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one
+well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came
+for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger
+and made me take and use it.
+
+And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and
+place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper
+room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that
+the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his
+benediction. All through this farce--which was in truth the grimmest of
+all tragedies--my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at
+the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign
+to me.
+
+You'd guess that I would take it hard--her leaving of me thus, as I made
+sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was
+off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted
+death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in
+childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had
+not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my
+mother's dying love.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS
+
+
+Though all the western quarter of the sky was night-black and spangled
+yet with stars, the dawn was graying slowly in the east when Tybee
+roused me.
+
+"They have not come for you as yet," he said; "so I took time by the
+forelock and passed the word for breakfast. It heartens a man to eat a
+bite and drink a cup of wine just on the battle's edge. Will you sit and
+let me serve you, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"That I will not," said I; adding that I would blithely share the
+breakfast with him. Whereat he laughed and clipt my hand, and swore I
+was a true soldier and a brave gentleman to boot.
+
+So we sat and hobnobbed at the table; and Tybee lighted all the remnant
+candle-ends, and broached the wine and pledged me in a bumper before we
+fell to upon the cold haunch of venison.
+
+My summons came when we had shared the heel-tap of the bottle. It was my
+toast to this kind-hearted youngster, and we drained it standing what
+time the stair gave back the tread of marching men. Tybee crashed his
+glass upon the floor and wrung my hand across the table.
+
+"Good by, my Captain; they have come. God damn me, sir, I'll swear they
+might do worse than let you go, for all your spying. You've carried off
+this matter with the lady as a gentleman should, and whilst I live, she
+shall not lack a friend. If you have any word to leave for her--"
+
+I shook my head. "No," said I; then, on second thought: "And yet there
+is a word. You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the
+lady?"
+
+"Surely; 'twas plain enough for any one to see."
+
+"Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to
+Richard Jennifer. He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in
+a formal way, and that to save the lady's honor."
+
+The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was
+lifted and my reprieve was at an end.
+
+Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier
+hangmen marched me off without ado. The house and all within it seemed
+yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly
+kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees. In shortest space
+we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.
+
+'Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day
+wakes wherein it must be shuffled off! As a soldier must, I thought I
+had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it
+upon my sleeve in battle. But now, when I was marching forth to this
+cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all
+nature cried aloud to me.
+
+The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden
+down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup
+abrim and running over with the wine of life. I thought the cool, moist
+air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature's garb had never
+seemed so blithe. There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded
+prospect. The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed
+enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us
+as we passed. And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with
+softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with
+one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had
+the scent of us.
+
+A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion
+picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made
+bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and
+saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.
+
+The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to
+be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that
+I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the
+volleying would not wake the house.
+
+So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and
+reply came out into an open grove of oaks: then I knew where they had
+brought me--and why. 'Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle
+with the baronet. On its farther confines two horses nibbled
+rein's-length at the grass, with Falconnet's trooper serving-man to hold
+them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my
+enemy was waiting.
+
+'Twas all prearranged; for when the ensign had saluted he marched his
+men a little way apart and drew them up in line with muskets ported. But
+at a sign from Falconnet, two of the men broke ranks and came to strap
+me helpless with their belts. I smiled at that, and would not miss the
+chance to jeer.
+
+"You are a sorry coward, Captain Falconnet, as bullies ever are," I
+said. "Would not your sword suffice against a man with empty hands?"
+
+He passed the taunt in silence, and when the men had left me, said: "I
+have come to speed your parting, Captain Ireton. You are a thick-headed,
+witless fool, as you have always been; yet since you've blundered into
+serving me, I would not grudge the time to come and thank you."
+
+"I serve you?" I cried. "God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the
+table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a
+carving tool!"
+
+He laughed softly. "Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because
+you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns," he retorted.
+"And yet I say you've served me."
+
+"Tell me how, in God's name, that I may not die with that sin unrepented
+of."
+
+"Oh, in many small ways, but chiefly in this affair with the little lady
+of Appleby."
+
+"Never!" I denied. "So far as decent speech could compass it, I have
+ever sought to tell her what a conscienceless villain you are."
+
+He laughed again at that.
+
+"You know women but indifferently, my Captain, if you think to breach a
+love affair by a cannonade of hard words. But I am in no humor to
+dispute with you. You have lost, and I have won; and, were I not here to
+come between, you'd look your last upon the things of earth in shortest
+order, I do assure you."
+
+"You?--you come between?" I scoffed. "You are all kinds of a knave, Sir
+Francis, but your worst enemy never accused you of being a fool!"
+
+There was a look in his eyes that I could never fathom.
+
+"You are bitter hard, John Ireton--bitter and savage and unforgiving.
+You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make
+the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have
+you never a touch of human kindliness in you?"
+
+To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I
+have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn
+a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use
+this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal
+of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me
+out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.
+
+So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and--"
+
+"Tush!" said he. "That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it
+now is but a mask."
+
+"For what?" I asked.
+
+"For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not,
+as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John
+Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's
+wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew
+not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me."
+
+"But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot
+and ran me through," I countered.
+
+"Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your
+eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life,
+and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might."
+
+"No; you reserved me for this."
+
+He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.
+
+"You forced my hand, John Ireton," he said, speaking low that the others
+might not hear. "You had her ear from day to day and used your
+privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for
+vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival--"
+
+I laughed, and sanity began to come again. "Make an end of it," I said.
+"I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you."
+
+For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it
+so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing
+Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime
+lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's
+headquarters in South Carolina.
+
+"Can you read it?" he asked.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to
+Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded."
+
+"To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?"
+
+"No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?"
+
+"No," said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.
+
+"He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to
+'list in your old service."
+
+"I would not take it--at your hands or his."
+
+"You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and
+honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines."
+
+"Make an end," I said again. "I understand you will obey his Lordship's
+order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you
+have me do?"
+
+"A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my
+very good friend."
+
+I let that go uncontradicted.
+
+"His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make
+it better," he went on.
+
+This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had
+not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he
+had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past
+midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.
+
+"Go on," said I.
+
+"Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you
+time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor."
+
+"Is that all?" I asked.
+
+"No; after that our ways must lie apart--or yours and Margery's, at all
+events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you
+have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the
+ensign."
+
+"And if I refuse?"
+
+He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.
+
+"If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to
+thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all." So much he
+said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I
+think, he spoke the simple truth. "God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's
+hell to have her!"
+
+I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This
+fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a
+passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why
+he was come upon this errand.
+
+"So?" said I. "Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?" 'Twas
+but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.
+
+He swore a sneering oath. "So the priest carried tales, did he? Well,
+make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from
+his bed and hanged like a dog."
+
+I smiled again. "'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to
+beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy."
+
+"Bah!" he scoffed. "That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I
+had better information."
+
+"A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward,
+some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and
+with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another,
+we made a sober truth of it."
+
+I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a
+fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell
+away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous
+demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought
+the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust
+his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake
+it made me shudder with abhorrence.
+
+"You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the
+spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish
+you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!" Then he
+wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. "Belt him
+to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting
+over-long."
+
+They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the
+ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little
+pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not
+why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line
+drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces
+pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I
+remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which
+would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range,
+a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets
+killed the senses.
+
+But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold
+it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside--a glance
+that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare--showed
+me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.
+
+What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
+waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
+the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
+the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
+left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had
+stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen--all this befell in
+less than any time the written words can measure.
+
+I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman
+slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
+centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
+was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
+steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
+followed after.
+
+It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
+the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
+Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
+live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
+his great hands clutching at the empty air.
+
+I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
+and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
+could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.
+
+I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the
+skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
+him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
+horse-holding trooper at his heels.
+
+And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
+and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
+away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS
+
+
+As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
+opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
+sense.
+
+Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
+ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
+the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
+agreed-on rallying point.
+
+Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
+any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
+patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
+British jaws to masticate.
+
+They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
+levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of
+all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
+contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward
+show among them of the sterling metal underneath.
+
+They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
+brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
+soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
+of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
+captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
+well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
+raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.
+
+Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against
+the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney
+of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military
+show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain
+persevering sort.
+
+"Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?" drawled one of
+them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face
+that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went
+on behind it. "I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the
+word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful
+o' lead to chaw on."
+
+I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in
+fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such
+as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.
+
+When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney--he was the
+limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind--gripped my hand and
+gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.
+
+"My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than
+that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of
+good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little;
+though as for that, we should both thank the Indian." At which he looked
+around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. "Where is
+the chief, Ephraim?"--this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically
+reloading his long rifle.
+
+"He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind
+about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking,
+immejitly, _if_ not sooner."
+
+Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for
+Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.
+
+"'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba," he said; "one of the friendlies. He was
+out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the
+news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
+to our little ambushment--"
+
+"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba:
+is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an
+Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
+more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
+little cadger."
+
+At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
+as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
+the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
+first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
+boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
+firelock and stood before me defenseless.
+
+Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
+the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
+my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
+plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
+and earned an Indian friendship.
+
+"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague
+of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if
+these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
+which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
+his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
+the day's march.
+
+"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,"
+he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
+Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
+against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
+the North."
+
+"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
+yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.
+
+He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
+shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
+frontier, had matriculated early.
+
+"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the
+Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."
+
+"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished
+reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
+the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.
+
+"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.
+
+The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a
+clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been
+heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.
+
+"By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says
+Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in
+wildcats; and I can do it now, _if_ not sooner!" he shrilled. "Come on,
+you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied--"
+
+Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in
+natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the
+borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the
+capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two
+went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a
+pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.
+
+For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the
+finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain
+apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man
+caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look
+behind him.
+
+Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might
+have done.
+
+"Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said.
+"There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let
+him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for
+every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or
+standing against trained troops in open field--" He shrugged again and
+turned to tighten his saddle-girth.
+
+"I see," said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was
+told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford,
+who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment
+thereabouts.
+
+"You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain
+Forney," said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew
+of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had
+overheard.
+
+"We'll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we're at our best in that,"
+he rejoined, carelessly. "And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that's an
+old story. The king's men have tried it twice and they have not yet
+caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping. Ease your mind on that
+score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing
+better to do. I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to
+keep it in countenance."
+
+At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its
+demands. As fortune's wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but
+by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend--to
+Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.
+
+'Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common
+enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind. In
+sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank
+confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings. That done, I owed it
+equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight
+marriage.
+
+So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I
+was not yet fit to take the field--which was true enough. Whereupon he
+and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we
+parted company.
+
+When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day's end.
+Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh
+into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till
+nightfall. The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge
+in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.
+
+It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags
+heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying
+clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air
+grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along. For sober second thought, and
+the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril
+overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had
+entangled me.
+
+The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing
+me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval. Would
+Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on
+the Holy Evangelists? I doubted it; and striving to see it through his
+eyes, was made to doubt it more. For death should have been my
+justifier, and death had played me false.
+
+As for setting the midnight marriage aside, I made sure the lawyer tribe
+could find a way, if that were all. But here there was a loyal daughter
+of the Church to reckon with. Loathing her bonds, as any true-hearted
+maiden must, would Margery consent to have them broken by the law? I
+knew well she would not. Though our poor knotting of the tie had been
+little better than a tragic farce, it lacked nothing of force to bind
+the tender conscience of a woman bred to look upon the churchly rite as
+final.
+
+So, twist and turn it as I might, the coil was desperate; and as I
+strode on gloomily, measuring this the first stage in a pilgrimage I had
+never thought to make, a fire of sullen anger began to smoke and
+smolder within me, and I could find it in my heart to curse the cruel
+kindness of my rescuers; to sorrow in my inmost soul that they had come
+between to make a living recreant of one who would fain have died an
+honest man.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR
+
+
+The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all
+the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to
+make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple
+grove.
+
+Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge
+was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor
+black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me
+back again.
+
+Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as
+majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line
+about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on
+the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would
+quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence
+must be in hiding.
+
+When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping
+against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of
+waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness for
+me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed
+and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate
+had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
+
+There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, with
+all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.
+There was no sally-port in all this wall save one--the one that death
+had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,
+death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of
+the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisoner
+of life.
+
+There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it
+calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at
+any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me
+for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
+but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
+hands.
+
+It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
+this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
+sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
+vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
+spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
+
+It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
+who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
+turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
+linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
+theirs.
+
+No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
+'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
+a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
+suicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
+flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
+sharpened stake to pinion it.
+
+'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
+my father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
+the chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
+how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
+the suicide came to give me pause.
+
+Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
+seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best
+safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary
+baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
+make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
+widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
+compassing of his end.
+
+But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
+my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
+offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
+would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
+robbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate that
+was to blame?
+
+These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
+bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
+straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness
+was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again
+and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that
+love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.
+
+In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours of
+waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the
+mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward
+constrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.
+
+The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy
+of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to be
+gone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was
+done, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other
+blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the
+night, I sallied forth upon my errand.
+
+I've wished a thousand times, as I sit here before the fire and jot
+these memories down in crabbed black on white, that I could conjure up
+for you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the story
+moves.
+
+True, its hills and valleys are the same; the river keeps its course;
+and in the west the mountain sky-line is unchanged. But here similitude
+is at an end. You've hacked the virgin forest into shapes and fringes
+where once it was an ample mantle seamed only by the rivers, and frayed
+here and there at distant intervals by the settler's ax.
+
+Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged in
+its furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the
+mystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the
+centuries. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles,
+became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, the
+solitude laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way.
+But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof, and all the
+shadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright the
+alien-born.
+
+I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and loved
+these forest solitudes. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, the
+twilight shadows awed me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk
+so like a crouching panther that I sprang aside and had the steel half
+out before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a man
+gliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with
+me as if with sinister intent.
+
+I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though
+inwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. What
+threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to
+fear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack of
+clamor when they were beating up a cover.
+
+Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting
+furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of my
+eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked
+a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent
+home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree.
+
+"Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?"
+
+The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was
+become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the
+belt, standing so near he could have pricked me with his scalping knife.
+
+It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the
+friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.
+
+"Uncanoola?" said I.
+
+He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?"
+
+I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head.
+
+"No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him _that_ way," pointing back
+along the path.
+
+"How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile
+had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the
+stately Indian hyperbole.
+
+"Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long
+eyes--see heap things."
+
+"Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?"
+
+"Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"--he
+threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling
+snake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and find
+canoe--jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh
+and shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'"
+
+By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learned
+of my escape and was seeking me.
+
+"Is that all the chief saw?" I asked.
+
+"Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tell
+Captain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow."
+
+"The white squaw?" said I. "Who is she?"
+
+The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mere
+shaking of the ribs.
+
+"No can tell that, neither, too," he said. Then, with a swift dart aside
+from the subject: "Captain Long-knife care much 'bout black dogs
+yonder?"
+
+I knew he meant the negroes at the hunting lodge.
+
+"The white man cares for the black as a kind master should," I returned.
+
+The Indian spat upon the ground in token of his hatred and contempt for
+all the black skins in his fatherland. I never understood this bitter
+race antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well written
+out in many a bloody massacre of that earlier day.
+
+"The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before
+the moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken."
+
+I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace.
+
+"Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool on
+their heads?" he queried.
+
+"If need be," I asserted.
+
+"Wah!" he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth had
+swallowed him.
+
+I lost no time in indecision. Since Jennifer was abroad, I had no
+business at the plantations; and if Tomas and the other refugees were
+like to come to harm, I could do no less than hasten back to warn or
+help them.
+
+So I retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw no
+more shadows in the ancient wood--in truth, had much ado to see the
+single step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skyless
+depths.
+
+I was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that I could hear
+the murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of the
+tree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green and
+then to red. 'Twas like the childish Africans, I said, to draw a secret
+sentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise it
+far and wide. Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy--
+
+A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of
+the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stood
+and listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in its
+scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me
+sorely of the breath I wanted.
+
+The cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieu
+thereof, was but a niggard acre hemmed in on every side, save that
+toward the river, by the virgin forest. For cover there were holly
+thickets here and there, and into one of these I plunged, creeping on
+hands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.
+
+The scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lasting
+shapes upon the memory. A brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glow
+flaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. The open
+space around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to and
+fro; and in the gloom beyond the fire I saw a shadowy horseman backed by
+others still more phantom-like.
+
+There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound
+Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that
+band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the
+powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.
+
+This was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when I came to
+look again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before the
+burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with
+the eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my
+faithful Darius.
+
+By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why
+they slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was his
+death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest
+alive with ghastly echoes.
+
+At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my
+blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for
+vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth
+and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup,
+and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon
+the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade
+it.
+
+This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The other
+blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behind
+through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave
+to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of
+savage triumph.
+
+They flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, and
+though I caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping of
+the Indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.
+
+I could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he would
+not tell them what they wished to know--could not, indeed, since I had
+left no word behind to track me by--was quickly evident. A cord was
+found, and while I crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helpless
+as one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs and
+swung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such a
+matter before the cabin door.
+
+He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the
+hand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.
+But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury the
+Indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that
+should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the
+splits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.
+
+You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.
+Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as
+pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would
+Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses
+unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me
+nauseate with horror.
+
+As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round
+and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to
+hear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to
+freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the
+cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly
+brown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a
+plea: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! shoot po' nigga and let um die!"
+
+This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and
+lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to
+try to put him out of misery.
+
+The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust of
+blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse
+apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well
+within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with
+the night.
+
+I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the
+rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his
+horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling
+to run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of
+handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble
+to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew
+his sword.
+
+In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here
+again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him
+fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he
+would not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon
+his shoutings.
+
+That done, I snatched the musket that had cost the man his life, and,
+staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In the
+interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed
+its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues
+beneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough,
+the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with
+green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not
+be merciful.
+
+I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and
+make a mark I could not miss. The pause gave space for some swift
+steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a
+fierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger held
+a life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.
+
+I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas,
+and by the laws of God and man had earned his death. The tortured slave
+had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would
+give him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bullet
+planted in my enemy's heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving
+me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.
+
+All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round
+as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold
+on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One little
+crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.
+But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "O
+Massa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy--shoot po' nigga and let 'um die!"
+
+I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king's
+musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger
+of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.
+
+And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these
+fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I was
+surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle
+bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN WHICH A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP
+
+
+In such a coil as this I'd looped about me there was nothing for it, as
+it seemed, but to draw the steel and die as a soldier should. So I broke
+cover on the forest side of the holly thicket with a yell as fierce as
+theirs, and picked a tree to set my back against, and ran for it.
+
+I never reached the tree. In mid career, when all the Cherokee wolf pack
+was bursting through the holly tangle at my heels, two men, a white man
+and an Indian, ran in ahead, as I supposed to cut me off. Just then the
+dry roof of the hunting lodge roared aflame, reddening the forest far
+and near. The light was at my back and on the faces of the two who ran
+to meet me. A great sob swelled in my throat and choked me, but I ran
+the faster. For these were my dear lad and the friendly Catawba,
+charging gallantly to cover my retreat.
+
+It was a ready help in time of need. They ran in bravely, the chief
+ahead, twirling his tomahawk for the throw, with Dick a pace to right
+and rear, his two great pistols brandished and the grandsire of all the
+broadswords dangling by a thong at his wrist.
+
+"Follow the chief!" he shouted in passing; and at the word the Catawba
+stopped short, sent his hatchet whistling into the yapping pack behind
+me, and swerved to run aside and point the way for me.
+
+Left to myself, I hope I should have had the grace to stand with
+Jennifer. But at the turning point of indecision the quick-witted Indian
+read my thought, and snatching the sword from my hand, gave me no choice
+but to follow him.
+
+So I ran with him; but as I fled I looked behind and saw a sight to put
+the ancient hero tales to the blush. One man against two-score my brave
+Dick stood, while through the underwood the mounted soldiery came to
+make the odds still greater.
+
+He never flinched for all the hurtling missiles sent on ahead to cut him
+down, nor gave a glance aside to where the horsemen were deploying to
+surround him. As I looked, the two great pistols belched in the very
+faces of the nearest Cherokees; and in the momentary check the firearms
+made, the basket-hilted claymore went to work, rising and falling like a
+weaver's beam.
+
+I saw no more; but some heart-bursting minutes later, when Jennifer came
+racing on behind to share the flight his heroic stand had made a
+possibility, the swelling sob choked me once again; and when I thought
+of what this his rescue of me meant to him, I could have blubbered like
+a boy.
+
+But there was little time or space to give remorse an inning. The
+Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels.
+And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted
+men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, you
+devils!"
+
+We ran in Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I
+followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a
+man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down
+through a tangled briar thicket into the river road.
+
+We were in time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could
+hear the _pad-pad-pad_ of the light-footed runners close upon us,
+following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was
+trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck
+gallop down the road.
+
+"Thank God!" says Richard, with a quick eyeshot to right and left in the
+lesser gloom of the open. "I was afeard even the chief might miss the
+place in the dark. Down the bank to the river!--quick, man, and
+cautious! If they smell us out now, we're no better than buzzard-meat!"
+And when we reached the water's edge: "You taught me how to paddle a
+pirogue, Jack; I hope you haven't lost the knack of it yourself."
+
+"No," said I; and the three of us slid the hollowed log into the stream.
+
+We were afloat in shortest order, holding the canoe against the current
+by clinging to the overhanging trees that fringed the bank; yet with
+paddles poised for a second dash for freedom should the need arise. I
+should have dipped forthwith to save the precious minutes, but Jennifer
+stayed me.
+
+"Hist!" he whispered. "Hold steady and listen. They can not see us from
+above; mayhap we've thrown them off the scent."
+
+I thought it most unlikely; but his guess was right and mine was wrong.
+Though any of these savages could lift a trail in daylight, following it
+at top speed like a trained blood-hound, yet now the darkness baffled
+them.
+
+So there was some running to and fro in the road above our heads, and
+then the troopers galloped down. Followed hastily a labored confab
+through the linguister, broken in the midst by a fury of hot oaths from
+Falconnet; and then the chase swept on toward the plantations, and we
+were left to make their losing of us sure by whatsoever means we chose.
+
+We paddled slowly up stream in silence, keeping well within the blacker
+shadow of the tree fringe. When we came opposite the glowing ruins of
+the hunting lodge, Jennifer backed upon his paddle.
+
+"You'll go ashore?" said he.
+
+I said I would, adding: "They have slaughtered poor old Darius, and I am
+loath to leave his bones for the buzzards to pick."
+
+He made no comment other than to swear in sympathy. When the pirogue
+grounded, the Indian was out like a cat, to vanish phantom-wise among
+the trees. I followed in some clumsier fashion, leaving Jennifer to
+keep the canoe; but half way up the hill he joined me, and would not
+turn back for all my urging. "No; hang me if I'll let you out of
+eye-grip again," was all he would say; and so we went together, and were
+together at the seeing of what the glowing ember-heap would show us.
+
+Poor Tomas had his sepulture already. His cord had burned in two and let
+him down so close beside the cabin wall that all the blazing debris from
+the overhanging eaves had made his funeral pile. Darius lay as I had
+last seen him; and him we buried in the maize clearing at the back, with
+the ember glow for funeral lights.
+
+It was a chanceful thing to do. Since the Cherokees had left their dead
+and wounded, and Falconnet the body of his trooper who had yielded me
+the musket, there was small doubt they would return. Yet we had time to
+dig a shallow grave for my old henchman; to dig and fill it up again;
+and afterward to make a circuit round the burning pile to reach the
+river side once more.
+
+When we had launched the canoe, and were afloat and ready for the start,
+the Catawba was still missing.
+
+"Where is the chief, think you?" I asked; but Dick's answer, if, indeed,
+he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the
+silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long
+drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the
+pirogue stern to strand with a quick paddle stroke.
+
+"That last was Uncanoola's war cry; they've doubled back in time to
+catch him at it!" he cried. "Stand by to drive her when I give the word!
+Here he comes!"
+
+Down the sloping hillside, looking, in the red glow of the ember heap,
+more like a flying demon than a man, came the Catawba, one hand gripping
+the scalping-knife, the other flung aloft to flaunt his terrible
+trophies in sight of his pursuers. They were so close upon him that
+waiting promised death for all of us; so Jennifer dipped again to send
+the canoe a broad jump from the bank.
+
+"Ready!" he cried. "He'll take the water like a fish, and we can pick
+him up afterward--_Now_!"
+
+I heard the clean-cut dive of the Indian, and struck the paddle deep to
+balance Jennifer's stroke. But as I bent to put my back into it, some
+flying missile caught me fair behind the ear, and but for Jennifer's
+quick wit I should have swamped the crazy shallop. In a flash he jerked
+me flat between his knees and sent the pirogue with a mighty thrust
+beyond the zone of fire light.
+
+At that, though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough
+to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the
+spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But
+afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's
+paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this
+gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning
+lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once
+again a little child sinking asleep in my young mother's arms.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH
+
+
+'Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.
+No odds how long the night, 'tis but a moment from the lapse of
+consciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep that
+crept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling drip
+from Jennifer's paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I came
+awake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and broken
+dreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.
+
+The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed of
+bearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and by
+the flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls of
+the burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been the
+well-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark of
+human occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with the
+reek of many fires.
+
+When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, and
+Jennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as a
+tender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.
+
+"Know you? Why should I not?" I said, wondering why the words took so
+many breaths between.
+
+"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to
+babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim
+death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set
+me dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here
+upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with
+only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.
+
+"A week?" I queried, when he had named the interval. "And you have been
+here all the time?"
+
+"I've never left you, save to forage for the pot," he admitted. "I dared
+not leave you, Jack."
+
+"But where are we?" I would ask.
+
+"In a den on the river's edge, a mile or more above your sacked cabin.
+'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and shared
+since by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it.
+Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid."
+
+"Then the chief came off safely?" I said, falling into a dumb and
+impotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so of
+strength to say a third.
+
+"Right as a trivet--scalps and all," laughed Jennifer. "He'll be the
+envy of every warrior in the tribe when he vaunts himself at the
+Catawbas' council fire."
+
+I let it rest a while at that, casting about for words to shape a
+hungrier question.
+
+"Have you no news?" I asked, at length.
+
+"Little or none," he answered shortly.
+
+"But you have had some word--some news--from Appleby Hundred?" I
+stammered feebly.
+
+"Nothing you'd care to hear," he rejoined, evasively, I thought. "'Tis
+as you left it, save that Tarleton whipped away to the south again as
+suddenly as he came, and our cursing baronet has made the manor house
+his headquarters in fact, lodging himself and all his troop on Mr.
+Stair. From his lying quiet and keeping the Cherokees in tow, there will
+be some deviltry afoot, I'll warrant."
+
+I knew that Falconnet was waiting for the powder cargo, but another
+matter crowded this aside.
+
+"But--but Margery?" I queried, on sharpest tenter-hooks to know how much
+or little he had heard.
+
+I thought his brow darkened at the question, but mayhap it was only a
+shadow cast by the flickering fire. At any rate, he laughed hardily.
+
+"She is well--and well content, I dare swear. 'Twas only yesterday I saw
+her taking the air on the river road, with Falconnet for an escort. You
+told me once he had a sure hand with the women and it made me mad; but,
+truly, I have come to think you drew it mild, Jack."
+
+Now though I could ply a decent ready blade, or keep a firing line from
+lurching at a pinch, I had not learned to put a snaffle on a blundering
+tongue, as I have said before.
+
+"Damn him as you please, Dick, and he'll warrant it. But you must not
+judge the lady over harshly, nor always by appearances. She may have
+flouted you as a boyish lover, and yet I think--"
+
+I stopped in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenest
+agonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgot
+the gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsed
+into shamed silence, but Jennifer would not suffer it.
+
+"Well, what is it that you think?" he demanded.
+
+"I think--nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick," I
+blundered on, seeing no way to put him off.
+
+He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old love
+reawakening.
+
+"Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know what
+she thinks of me?" he broke in, eagerly.
+
+I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice my
+savior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship.
+I knew it--knew that the pregnant moment for full confession had
+arrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed,
+I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could make
+him understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So I
+paltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.
+
+"You forget that I have come to know her well," I said. "I was a month
+or more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me many
+things."
+
+Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.
+
+"What things?" he questioned, promptly.
+
+"Oh, many things. She spoke often of you."
+
+"What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "It
+can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me--nay,'tis
+even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh,
+Jack, I love her!--I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she
+stood by to spring the drop and turn me off!"
+
+Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, this
+passionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I must
+needs be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.
+
+"Another time, Richard. I am strangely unnerved and dizzy-headed now. By
+and by, when I am stronger, I will tell you all."
+
+Taking a reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimed
+malison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewed
+me a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I had
+drunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, he
+spread his coat to screen me from the fire light and would have driven
+me to sleep again.
+
+"At any rate, you shall not talk," he promised. "If you are wakeful I
+will talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about the
+fighting."
+
+His news was chiefly a later repetition of Father Matthieu's and Captain
+Abram Forney's, but there was this to add: the Congress had appointed
+the Englishman, Horatio Gates, chief of the army in the South, and this
+new leader was on his way to take command.
+
+De Kalb, with the Maryland and Delaware lines and Colonel Armand's
+legion, was encamped on Deep River, waiting for the newly-appointed
+general; and Caswell and Griffith Rutherford, with the militia, were
+already pressing forward to some handgrips with my Lord Cornwallis in
+the South.
+
+Nearer at hand, the partizan war-fire flamed afresh wherever a Tory
+company met a patriot, and there were wicked doings, more like savage
+massacres than fair-fought battles of the soldier sort.
+
+When he had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell me
+how he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the night
+of the cabin sack.
+
+"'Twas partly chance," he said. "A redcoat troop had me in durance at
+Jennifer House, and while they affected to hold me at parole, I never
+gave consent to that, and so was kept a prisoner. They shut me in the
+wine-bin with a guard, and when the fellow was well soaked and silly, I
+bound and gagged him and broke jail. I took the river for it, meaning to
+outlie until the hue and cry was over; and just at dusk Uncanoola
+dropped upon me and told me of your need. From that to helping him cut
+you out of your raffle with the Cherokees was but a hand's turn in the
+day's work."
+
+"A lucky turn for me," I said; and then at second thought I would deny
+the saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerous ground
+again, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-driven
+on a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, and
+where he got the antique claymore.
+
+He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.
+
+"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in
+'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first
+pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both
+sides--no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends
+for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."
+
+"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the low
+country settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.
+
+"They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. Mistress
+Flora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying,
+they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over,
+the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick of
+the fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us,
+came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-odd
+miles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for the
+prisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty--these
+and the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to my
+lot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow as
+ever skirled a pibroch."
+
+"That was like you," I said; "to make a friend and retainer out of your
+prisoner. And so this Highland piper has been your fencing master, has
+he?"
+
+"'Twas he taught me what little I know of the claymore play; and this
+stout old blade is his. 'Tis as good as a woodman's ax when you have the
+knack of swinging it."
+
+"Truly," said I. "Also, you seemed to have the knack, and the strength
+as well, in spite of the crippled arm you were carrying in a sling the
+night before when they haled you into Colonel Tarleton's court at
+Appleby."
+
+"A little ruse of war," he said, laughing and making a fist to show me
+his arm was strong and sound again. "'Twas M'Gillicuddy put me up to it,
+saying they would be like to deal the gentler with a wounded man. But
+how came you to know?"
+
+Here was another chance to tell him what he should be told, but the
+words would not say themselves.
+
+"I stood within arm's reach of you that night," said I; and from that I
+hastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it came
+to in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all.
+
+"You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when I
+had made an end of this recounting of my adventures. "He knows you are
+in hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well for
+you--or, more belike, for both of us."
+
+"How do you know this?" I asked.
+
+"I have both seen and heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge,
+and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twas
+just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past in the
+canoe."
+
+"But you say you have heard, as well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Don't ask me, Jack."
+
+I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this he
+blurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth.
+
+"Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess who
+it is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"'Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack," he said,
+bitterly. "It seems that Falconnet made sure we had both gone to join
+the army, which was but natural. If she were less than the spiteful
+little Tory vixen that she is, she would have been content to let it
+rest so. But she would not let it rest so. With her own lips she assured
+Falconnet he still had us to reckon with; nay, more--she made a boast of
+it that we would never go so far away from her."
+
+Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbow
+feebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.
+
+"Who slandered her like this, Dick? Put a name to the cur, and as I live
+and get my strength again, I'll hunt him down and choke him with that
+lie!"
+
+"Nay," he objected soberly; "that would be my quarrel, were there ever a
+peg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that is
+friendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeates
+by name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at Appleby
+Hundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoats
+and Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard one
+night when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. He
+says she was in a pretty passion at the baronet's slackness, stamping
+her foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of one
+or both of us."
+
+I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might
+of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce
+conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of
+the ways for the lover and the husband.
+
+Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he loved
+her--would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That was
+the lover's road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could I
+believe her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love could
+live beyond that moment of conviction.
+
+But at this perilous pass the husband's road ran truer than the lover's.
+Richard believed her capable of this hard-hearted thing and went on
+loving her blindly in spite of it. But as for me, I said I would never
+give belief an inch of standing-room; that had I stood in Ephraim
+Yeates's shoes, having the witness of my own eyes and ears, I would
+still have found excuse and exculpation for her.
+
+I stole a glance at Jennifer. He was sitting with his face in his hands,
+a silent figure of a strong man humbled. He had called her a Delilah,
+and the green withes of her binding cut sore into the flesh.
+
+"You say you love her, Dick; can you believe her capable of this, and
+yet go on loving her?" I asked.
+
+He let me see his face. It was haggard and grief-marred.
+
+"I'd pay the devil's own price could I say 'no' to that, Jack. But I can
+not."
+
+"Then I swear I love her better than you do, Richard Jennifer. She hates
+me well--God knows she has good cause to hate me fiercely; yet I would
+trust her with my life."
+
+I looked to see him pin me down at this; and though the words had
+fairly shaped and said themselves, I laid fast hold of my courage and
+was prepared to make them good. But he would only smile and draw the
+bearskin cover over me, tucking me in as tenderly as a mother, and
+saying very gently:
+
+"So she has bewitched you, too; and now there are two poor fools of love
+instead of one. But you are stronger than I, Jack. You will break the
+spell and put it down and live beyond it, and that I never shall--God
+help me!" And with that, he went to his own bed beside the fire, telling
+me I must lie quiet and try to sleep.
+
+I did lie quiet, but sleep came not, nor did I woo it. For long past the
+time when I could hear his measured breathing, I lay awake to plan how I
+might draw the baronet's man-hunt to myself, and so free my loyal
+Richard of the peril that by rights was mine.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SHOWING HOW LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+For some few days after Jennifer's narrow escape at the entrance to our
+hiding place, the Cherokees were hot upon our scent, quartering the
+forest on both banks of the river, determined, as it seemed, to hunt or
+starve us out.
+
+It was in this time of siege that I came to know, as I had not known
+before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad's love for me. While the
+life-tide was at its ebb and I was querulous and helpless weak, he was
+my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. And later, when the
+tide was fairly turned and I had found my soldier's appetite again, he
+spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess what risks he ran
+to fetch me dainties from the outer world.
+
+In this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from
+serving me. Once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and
+maize cake with plain cold water, I mourned the good wine idling in its
+bin at Jennifer House. At that, without a word to me, he took the whole
+night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the
+Jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its
+bringing had cost in toil and hazard.
+
+Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man
+at need--how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as
+before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone
+the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,--'twas Mr.
+Gilbert Stair's, I mistrusted, though Dick would never name the owner,
+and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.
+
+In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If
+he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could
+not have made him tenderer.
+
+'Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom
+friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I
+have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough
+and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the
+border-born.
+
+But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart,
+a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress
+he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about
+who made a business of their chivalry.
+
+With his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure
+that I was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all
+the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. As you have guessed,
+I had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how I had staked his
+chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate--staked and lost
+it. Now that it was gone, I saw how I had missed the golden opportunity;
+how I had weakly hesitated when delay could only make the telling
+harder.
+
+By tacit consent we never spoke of Margery. Richard's silence hung upon
+despair, I thought; and as for mine, since the husband's road and the
+lover's lay so far apart, I could not bring myself to speak of her. But
+she was always first in my thoughts in that time of convalescence, as I
+made sure she was in his; and at the last the hidden thing between us
+was brought to light.
+
+It was on a night some three weeks or more after my fever turn. Our
+larder had run low again, and Jennifer had spent the earlier hours of
+the night abroad--to little purpose, as it chanced. 'Twas midnight or
+thereabouts when he came swearing in to tell me that the Tories were out
+again to harry our side of the river afresh, and to make a refugee's
+begging of a bag of meal a thing of peril.
+
+"They'll starve us out in shortest measure at this rate," he prophesied.
+"They have trampled down all the standing corn for miles around, and
+this morning they burned the mill. 'Tis our notice to quit, and we'd
+best take it. There has been fighting to the south of us--a plenty of
+it--at Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, and elsewhere, and every man is
+needed. If you are strong enough to stand the march, we'll run the
+gantlet down the river in the pirogue and cut across from the lower ford
+to join Major Davie or Mr. Gates."
+
+I said I was fit enough, and would do whatever he thought best. And then
+I took a step upon the forbidden ground.
+
+"Falconnet is still at Appleby Hundred?" I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And you will join the army at the front and leave Margery to his tender
+mercies?"
+
+His laugh was bitter; so bitter that I scarce knew it for Richard
+Jennifer's.
+
+"Mistress Margery Stair is well, and well content, as I told you once
+before. She has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well
+hanged."
+
+"Nay, Richard; you judge her over-harshly. I fear you do not love her as
+her lover should."
+
+"Say you so? Listen: to-night I got as far as the manor house, being
+fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. God help me, Jack!
+I had it. They have scraped together all the Tory riff-raff this side of
+the river--Falconnet and the others--and are holding high revel at
+Appleby. Since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant
+enough of women of their own kidney, and I saw Madge dancing like any
+light o' love with every jackanapes that offered."
+
+"In her father's house she could not well do less," I averred, cut to
+the heart, as he was, and yet without his younger lover's jealousy to
+make me unjust.
+
+"Or more," he added, savagely. "'Tis as I say; she lacks nothing we can
+give her, and we'd as well be off about our business."
+
+I think he never had it in his heart to leave her in any threat of
+danger. But from his point of view there was no danger threatening her
+save that which she seemed willing enough to rush upon--a life of titled
+misery as Lady Falconnet. I saw how he would see it; saw, too, that his
+was the saner summing of it up. And yet--
+
+He broke into my musings with a pointed question. "What say you, Jack?
+'Tis but a little whiffet of a Tory jade who cares not the snap of her
+finger for either of us. The night is fine and dark. Shall we float the
+canoe and give them all the slip?"
+
+This was how it came to turn upon a "yes" or "no" of mine. I hesitated,
+I know not why. In the little pause the fire burned low between us, and
+the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye
+as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. The silence, too, was
+stifling. There was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of
+the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle
+in the throat of the dying.
+
+I've always made a scoff of superstition, and yet, my dears, a thousand
+questions in this life of ours must hang answerless to the crack of doom
+if you deny it standing-room. I knew no more than I have set down here
+of Margery's besetment; nay, I had every reason Richard Jennifer had to
+believe that she was well and well content, lacking nothing, save,
+mayhap, the freedom to marry where she chose.
+
+And yet, out of the stifling silence there came a sudden cry for help; a
+cry voiceless to the outward ear, but sharp and piercing to that finer
+inward sense; a cry so real that I would start and listen, marveling
+that Jennifer made no sign of having heard it.
+
+In the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a
+distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by
+the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and
+scattering the handful of fire where it struck.
+
+Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between
+his teeth upon our dallying.
+
+"Too late, by God!" he cried. "They've trapped us like a pair of blind
+moles!" And with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear
+again when he found no room to swing it in.
+
+Having the handier weapon, I slipped out before him, creeping on hands
+and knees till I could see the leafy screen at the den's mouth, and the
+shimmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it. There was
+no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as Jennifer had
+left it.
+
+To make assurance sure, I would have scrambled to the bank above; but
+at the moment Jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so I crept back into
+the burrow.
+
+"See here," he said, excitedly. "What a devil will you make of this?"
+
+He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again,
+and had sought and found the arrow. It was a blunt-head reed and no war
+shaft. And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken
+threads, was a little scroll of parchment.
+
+"'Tis the Catawba's arrow," said Jennifer, though how he knew I could
+not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.
+
+Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of
+Captain Stuart's that I had found and lost again. And on the margin of
+it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the
+bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling
+beside me, murmuring her "Holy Marys."
+
+"Read it," said I. "It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the
+heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about
+the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes," he broke in; "I've spelled it out. But this line added at
+the bottom--surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in
+Madge's hand!"
+
+He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we
+deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither
+greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.
+
+"If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"--here
+was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and
+then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come
+to me out of the darkness and silence: "_A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!_"
+
+We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.
+
+"You make it out?" said I, after a moment of strained silence.
+
+He nodded. "She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were
+boy and maid together."
+
+A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we
+were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the
+spring.
+
+It was Jennifer who spoke first. "'Twas meant for me," he said; and his
+voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.
+
+"No!" said I, curtly.
+
+"I say it was!"
+
+"Then you say the thing which is not."
+
+Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should
+have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. But he
+said no word of what had gone before.
+
+"You may give me the lie, if you like, John Ireton; I shall not strike
+you." He said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. Then he
+added, hotly: "You know well that word was meant for me!"
+
+At this--God forgive me!--my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him
+for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye
+of every woman he should meet. "She needs a man!" I raged, lost now to
+every sense of decent justice, "a man, I say! And to whom would she send
+if not to her--"
+
+I choked upon the word. He had risen with me, and we stood face to face
+in that grim earth-womb, snarling fiercely at each other across the
+narrow firelit space; two men with every tie to knit us close together,
+and yet--God save us all!--a pair of wild beasts strung up to the
+killing pitch because, forsooth, we must needs front each other across a
+deadline drawn by the finger of a woman!
+
+God knows what would have come of all this had my dear lad been as
+fierce a fool as I. 'Twas his good common sense that saved us both, I
+think, for when the savage rival madness was at its height he turned
+away, swearing we were the very pick and choice of a world of asses to
+stand thus feeling for each other's throats when, mayhap, the lady
+needed both of us.
+
+This brought me to my senses at a gallop, as you would guess; to them
+and to the lighting of the conscience fire within whereon to grill the
+wicked heart that but now had thirsted for a brother's blood.
+
+"Now God have mercy on us both!" I groaned. "Forgive me, Dick, if you
+can; I was as mad as any Bedlamite. If I have any claim on her, 'tis not
+of her good will, you may be sure. You have the baronet to fear--not
+me."
+
+He shook his head and pointed to the parchment--to the line in French.
+
+"Francis Falconnet was under the same roof with her--or at least in easy
+call--when she wrote that, Jack. He is no longer my rival--nor yours."
+
+His word set me thinking, and I would fall to picking out the strands
+that jealous wrath had woven for me into the web of happenings. Setting
+aside the story brought by Ephraim Yeates, there was no certain proof
+that she had ever favored the Englishman; nay, more, till I had come to
+be madly jealous of Falconnet, I had made sure that Jennifer was the
+favored one.
+
+At this, as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the
+lightning's flash, I saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had
+brought--saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword I
+had let fall when Dick had found the arrow.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" he asked, gently.
+
+"My sword!" I gasped. "We should have been half-way there by this.
+Yeates was misled. 'Tis Falconnet she fears. She was at bay--hark you,
+at bay and fair desperate. That word of hers to the baronet was her poor
+pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here--"
+
+He found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:
+
+"Come on! You can strew the dust and ashes on me later. You said you
+loved her the better, and I do believe it now, Jack! You trusted her, as
+I did not. We'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever
+it may be; and after that is done I'll make my bow and leave you a fair
+field."
+
+"Nay, nay; that you shall not, Dick," I began; but he was half-way
+through the narrow passage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword
+and the bearskin from his bed; and I was fain to follow quickly, leaving
+the protest all unfinished.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
+
+
+As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak
+when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and
+beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.
+
+Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm
+midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As
+I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the
+rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and
+sweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, were
+separate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse.
+Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to match
+the windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores sped
+backward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood that
+barely kissed the ripples in passing, the river lapped and gurgled,
+chuckling weirdly at the paddle plungings, and swirling aft in the
+longer reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a wavering
+finger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.
+
+With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was some
+little distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst with
+death, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion through
+the wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to come
+upon a sentry.
+
+Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guarded
+than that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, spared
+by my father twenty years before to be a grouse and pheasant cover, and
+fetching a compass of half a mile or more across the maize fields, came
+in among the oaks and hickories of the manor grounds.
+
+Still there was no sight nor sound of any enemy; no light of candles at
+the house, or of camp-fires beneath the trees.
+
+A little way within the grove, where the interlacing tree-tops made the
+darkness like Egyptian night, Jennifer went on all fours to feel around
+as if in search of something on the sward. Whereat I called softly to
+know what he would be at.
+
+He rose, muttering, half as to himself: "I thought I'd never be so far
+out of reckoning." Then to me: "A few hours since, the Cherokees were
+encamped just here. You are standing in the ashes of their fire."
+
+"So?" said I. "Then they have gone?"
+
+"Gone from this safely enough, to be sure. They have been gone some
+hours; the cinders are cold and dew wet."
+
+"So much the better," I would say, thinking only that now there would
+be the fewer enemies to fight.
+
+He clipt my arm suddenly, putting the value of an oath into his gripping
+of it.
+
+"Come awake, man; this is no time to be a-daze!" His whisper was a sharp
+behest, with a shake of the gripped arm for emphasis. "If the Indians
+are gone, it means that the powder train has come and gone, too."
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+I was still thinking, with less than a clod's wit, that this would send
+the baronet captain about his master's business, and so Margery would
+have surcease of him for a time, at least. But Jennifer fetched me awake
+with another whip-lash word or two.
+
+"Jack! has the night's work gone to your head? If Falconnet has got his
+marching orders you may be sure he's tried by hook or crook to play
+'safe bind, safe find,' with Madge. By heaven! 'twas that she was afeard
+of, and we are here too late! Come on!"
+
+With that he faced about and ran; and forgetting to loose his grip on my
+arm, took me with him till I broke away to have my sword hand free. So
+running, we came presently to the open space before the house, and,
+truly, it was well for us that the place was clean deserted; for by this
+we had both forgot the very name of prudence.
+
+Jennifer outran me to the door by half a length, and fell to hammering
+fiercely on the panel with the pommel of his broadsword.
+
+"Open! Mr. Stair; open!" he shouted, between the batterings; but it was
+five full minutes before the fan-light overhead began to show some faint
+glimmerings of a candle coming from the rooms beyond.
+
+Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled from
+within.
+
+"Be off, you runagates! Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!"
+
+Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out
+his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching of
+the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. There
+was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him
+on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs,
+breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, went
+screeching over us.
+
+Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing
+off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with a
+splintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It
+was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the
+old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave
+it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well
+blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing
+spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.
+
+We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither,
+as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which
+he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was
+alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his
+loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders
+of the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name till
+he should have his cue from us.
+
+Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathing
+space, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine in
+any bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and propped
+him in the corner of the high-backed hall settle.
+
+The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reigned
+supreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreck
+and litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struck
+off, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky with
+spilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass.
+
+I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup to
+pour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jennifer
+and his charge. The old man had come to some better sensing of
+things,--he had been vastly more frightened than hurt, as I
+suspected,--and to Richard's eager questionings was able to give some
+feebly querulous replies.
+
+"Yes, they're gone--all gone, curse 'em; and they've taken every plack
+and bawbee they could lay their thieving hands upon," he mumbled. "'Tis
+like the dogs; to stay on here and eat and drink me out of house and
+home, and then to scurry off when I'm most like to need protection."
+
+"But Madge?" says Richard. "Is she safe in bed?"
+
+"She's a jade!" was all the answer he got. Then the old man sat up and
+peered around the end of the settle to where I stood, cup and bottle in
+hand. "'Tis a Christian thought," he quavered. "Give me a sup of the
+wine, man."
+
+I served him and had a Scottish blessing for my wastefulness, because,
+forsooth, the broken bottle spilt a thimbleful in the pouring. I saw he
+did not recognize me, and was well enough content to let it rest thus.
+
+Richard suffered him to drink in peace, but when the cup was empty he
+renewed his asking for Margery. At this the master of the house,
+heartened somewhat by my father's good madeira, made shift to get upon
+his feet in some tremulous fashion.
+
+"Madge, d'ye say? She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced
+deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie
+Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to
+the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all
+that he should have learned from never any other lips but mine own. But
+Richard himself parried the impending stroke of truth, saying:
+
+"So she is safe and well, Mr. Stair, 'tis all I ask to know."
+
+"She is safe enough; safer by far than you are at this minute, my young
+cock-a-hoop rebel, now that the king--God save him!--has his own again."
+
+I turned quickly on the broad door-stone to look within. Out of doors
+the early August dawn was graying mistily overhead, but in the house the
+sputtering tallow dip still struggled feebly with the gloom. They stood
+facing each other, these two, my handsome lad, the pick and choice of a
+comely race, looking, for all his toils and vigils, fresh and fit; and
+the old man in his woolen dressing-gown, his wig awry, and his lean face
+yellow in the candle-light.
+
+"How is that you say, Mr. Stair?" says Dick. "The king--but that is only
+the old Tory cry. There will never be a king again this side of the
+water."
+
+The old man reached out and hooked a lean finger in the lad's
+buttonhole. "Say you so, Richard Jennifer? Then you will never have
+heard the glorious news?" This with a leer that might have been of
+triumph or the mere whetting of gossip eagerness--I could not tell.
+
+"No," says Richard, with much indifference.
+
+"Hear it, then. 'Twas at Camden, four days since. They came together in
+the murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor fool
+Gates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, is
+captured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds.
+And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with Sumter
+at Fishing Creek and caught him napping. Whereupon, Charlie McDowell and
+the over-mountain men, seeing all was lost, broke their camp on the
+Broad and took to their heels, every man jack of them for himself. So ye
+see, Dickie Jennifer, there's never a cursed corporal's guard left in
+either Carolina to stand in the king's way."
+
+He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson got
+by heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hope
+that it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truth
+appear in answer to a curt question.
+
+"'Tis beyond doubt?--all this, Mr. Stair?"
+
+The old loyalist--loyalist now, if never certainly before--sat down on
+the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded
+like the crumpling of new parchment.
+
+"You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest you
+learn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. There
+were some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here no
+longer ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man!
+but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?"
+
+"Yes," said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short of
+gospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser's
+wine cellar.
+
+"Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye no
+ill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'll
+hang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll say
+naught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir,
+and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'll
+enter a _nolle prosequi_ on that till you're amnestied and back, then
+you can pay me the damage of the broken lock and we'll cry quits."
+
+At this my straightforward Richard snorted in wrathful derision. However
+much he loved the daughter, 'twas clear he had small regard for the
+father.
+
+"Seeing we came to do you a service, Mr. Stair, I think we may set the
+blunderbuss and the handful of slugs over against the smashed door. And
+that fetches me back to our errand here. You say Madge is safe. Does
+that mean that you have spirited her away since last night?"
+
+"Dinna fash yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for your
+betters, sir!" rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as he
+did now and then in fear or anger.
+
+"Still I would know what you mean when you say she is safe," says
+Richard, whose determination to crack a nut was always proportioned to
+the hardness of the shell.
+
+Gilbert Stair cursed him roundly for an impertinent jackanapes, and then
+gave him his answer.
+
+"'Tis none of your business, Dickie Jennifer, but you may know and be
+hanged to you! She rode home with the Witherbys last night after the
+rout, and will be by this safe away in t'other Carolina where your
+cursed Whiggeries darena lift head or hand."
+
+"Of her own free will?" Dick persisted.
+
+"Damme! yes; bag, baggage, serving wench and all. Now will you be off
+about your business before some spying rascal lays an information
+against me for harboring you?"
+
+Richard joined me on the door-stone. The dawn was in its twilight now,
+and the great trees on the lawn were taking gray and ghostly shapes in
+the dim perspective.
+
+"You heard what he had to say?" said he.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"It seems we have missed our cue on all sides," he went on, not without
+bitterness. "I would we might have had a chance to fire a shot or two
+before the ship went down."
+
+"At Camden, you mean? That's but the beginning; the real battles are all
+to be fought yet, I should say."
+
+He shook his head despondently. "You are a newcomer, Jack, and you know
+not how near outworn the country is. Gilbert Stair has the right of it
+when he says there will be nothing to stop the redcoats now."
+
+I called to mind the resolute little handful under Captain Abram Forney,
+one of many such, he had told me, and would not yield the point.
+
+"There will be plenty of fighting yet, and we must go to bear a hand
+where it is needed most," said I. "Where will that be, think you? At
+Charlotte?"
+
+He looked at me reproachfully.
+
+"This time 'tis you who are the laggard in love, John Ireton. Will you
+go and leave Mistress Margery wanting an answer to her poor little cry
+for help?"
+
+I shrugged. "What would you? Has she not taken her affair into her own
+hands?"
+
+"God knows how much or little she has had to say about it," said he.
+"But I mean to know, too, before I put my name on any company roll." We
+were among the trees by this, moving off for safety's sake, since the
+day was coming; and he broke off short to wheel and face me as one who
+would throttle a growling cur before it has a chance to bite. "We know
+the worst of each other now, Jack, and we must stand to our compact. Let
+us see her safe beyond peradventure of a doubt; then I'm with you to
+fight the redcoats single-handed, if you like. I know what you will
+say--that the country calls us now more than ever; but there must needs
+be some little rallying interval after all this disaster, and--"
+
+"Have done, Richard," said I. "Set the pace and mayhap I can keep step
+with you. What do you propose?"
+
+"This; that we go to Witherby Hall and get speech with Mistress Madge,
+if so be--"
+
+"Stay a moment; who are these Witherbys?"
+
+"A dyed-in-the-wool Tory family seated some ten miles across the line in
+York district. True, 'tis a rank Tory hotbed over there, and we shall
+run some risk."
+
+"Never name risk to me if you love me, Richard Jennifer!" I broke in.
+"What is your plan?"
+
+His answer was prompt and to the point. "To press on afoot through the
+forest till we come to the York settlement; then to borrow a pair of
+Tory horses and ride like gentlemen. Are you game for it?"
+
+I hesitated. "I see no great risk in all this, and whatever the hazard,
+'tis less for one than for two. You'd best go alone, Richard."
+
+He saw my meaning; that I would stand aside and let him be her succor if
+she needed help. But he would not have it so.
+
+"No," he said, doggedly. "We'll go together, and she shall choose
+between us for a champion, if she is in the humor to honor either of us.
+That is what 'twill come to in the end; and I warn you fairly, John
+Ireton, I shall neither give nor take advantage in this strife. I said
+last night that I would stand aside, but that I can not--not till she
+herself says the killing word with her own lips."
+
+"And that word will be--?"
+
+"That she loves another man. Come; let us be at it; we should be well
+out of this before the plantation people are astir."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+HOW A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS
+
+
+Having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to the
+fields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarters
+where the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and so
+to cross in our canoe.
+
+The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair
+weather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloud
+bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize
+blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.
+
+In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave
+but for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the higher
+tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly to
+deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where
+there was none.
+
+Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned
+the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by
+keeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin wood was free of
+undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. Fireside tradition
+on the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearly
+burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer.
+I vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for the
+fact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-like
+stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's own
+building, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countless
+trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined
+arches overhead.
+
+Through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, as
+I have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction
+served. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at
+feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on
+we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset
+undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle
+with the bushes.
+
+It was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purring
+of the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff
+the air.
+
+"Smoke," he said, briefly, in answer to my query. "A camp-fire, with
+meat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it."
+
+I said I could not--did not, at all events.
+
+"Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up your
+woodcraft and we'll stalk it." And, suiting the action to the word, he
+dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of
+the thicket.
+
+I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze
+with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a
+youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was
+well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could
+be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and
+tiger-strong to spring.
+
+In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the
+brink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow
+ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bit
+of grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it was
+sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a
+branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if
+to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned;
+and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a
+cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.
+
+One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirt
+and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leather
+fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he wore
+a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap
+his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the
+other tasselings in countenance. The hunting-shirt was belted at the
+waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to
+serve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs crossed upon his
+shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the
+knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.
+
+The other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all our
+southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of
+ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his
+leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an
+arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the
+scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, but
+far more vicious looking.
+
+For a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine,
+neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling must
+needs let out a yell.
+
+"Now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet.
+But at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was sent
+tumbling with the small landslide of clay down upon the twain at the
+fire.
+
+It went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at the
+fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot
+brought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was the
+quicker, Richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, I
+think. At the trigger-pulling instant the Catawba thrust the thick of
+his hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless for
+Jennifer, into the palm of the Indian.
+
+"Wah!" he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. "No want kill Captain
+Jennif', hey?"
+
+Ephraim Yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand held
+fast by the gun-flint.
+
+"Well, I'm daddled, fair and square, Cap'n Dick!" he declared. "Jest one
+more shake of a dead lamb's tail, and I'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartain
+sure! I allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-away
+behint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son."
+
+Dick laughed and called to me to follow as I could. And his answer to
+the old borderer was no answer at all.
+
+"'Tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with that
+deer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton and
+I, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
+
+At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work
+hospitably on the meat supply. Meanwhile I came upon the scene,
+something less hurriedly than Richard. Ephraim Yeates looked me up and
+down with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and a
+third for the German ritter-boots I wore.
+
+"Umph!" said he. "Now if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighter
+again! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on a
+stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" Then to me, most pointedly:
+"Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez I
+allow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up on
+the briars."
+
+He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair's
+parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed with
+him.
+
+"Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates," said I. "I am too near
+famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast."
+
+Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat
+upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.
+
+"Whoop!" he yelled. "No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out
+to call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, you
+infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye
+in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail
+top-knot o' your'n! _Yip-pee!_"
+
+By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
+might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
+stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
+countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
+capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.
+
+For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
+senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
+out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
+wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
+promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
+trick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which sent
+him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
+landslide.
+
+The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
+When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
+sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.
+
+"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
+Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meat
+with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
+friend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
+or'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from now
+on, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of
+which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
+colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.
+
+As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,
+pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he
+would never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon the
+deer's meat which was by this time--not cooked, to be sure, but seared a
+little on the outside in true hunter fashion.
+
+While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return
+Ephraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to the
+letter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery's
+father had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered to
+the four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted
+and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was
+carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of
+his men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming in
+all the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the
+outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as King
+George himself could wish.
+
+"But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like
+all the others?" Richard would ask.
+
+The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed
+meat. "I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on
+the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?"
+
+The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on to
+explain.
+
+"Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, for
+spying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but
+'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twas
+a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to
+sneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees."
+
+"Well?" says Dick.
+
+The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to
+impale it on the forked toasting stick.
+
+"Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's our
+A-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,
+heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'--which is good
+Injun-talk for anything ye like,--and so here we are, hot-foot on the
+trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."
+
+"Alone?" said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this
+chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.
+
+The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "We ain't sich tarnation
+big fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallop
+us, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. But
+there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and
+raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?"
+
+But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy
+left Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests had
+traveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet and
+his troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,
+or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistress Margery riding her
+own black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, had
+passed some two hours later.
+
+This was as we had hoped it might be; but when Dick's satisfaction
+would have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign for
+silence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to the
+ground. Whereat we all began likewise to listen, but I, for one, heard
+nothing till Yeates said: "A hoss; a-taking the back track like old Jehu
+the son of Nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur," and then we all
+marked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.
+
+The old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, and
+caught up his rifle. "Let's be a-moving," he said. "We must make out to
+stop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's a
+rip-snorting that-away for."
+
+The road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfast
+camp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, a
+negro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearing
+down to the ford. At sight of us, or else because he would not take the
+water at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily,
+carrying his skilless rider with him.
+
+We picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found his
+tongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to fire
+the blood in our veins--in Jennifer's and mine, at any rate.
+
+"Yah!" he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nigh
+strangled him. "Yah! red debbil Injins kill ebberybody and tote off
+Mistis Marg'y and dat Jeanne 'ooman! Dat's what dey done!"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+IN WHICH WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE
+
+
+It was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected
+account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all
+save the principal fact of the carrying off of Mistress Margery and her
+maid was hazy enough.
+
+Pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the
+foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party
+of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a
+creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress
+and her tire-woman had been captured.
+
+So far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen
+nothing. There had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black
+darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of Indian yells, shouts from the
+men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
+newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
+he knew no more till some one--his master, as he thought--kicked him
+alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
+Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
+and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.
+
+Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
+his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,
+it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his
+orders was his master. In the darkness and confusion he could make sure
+of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and
+the wording of the message he carried.
+
+When we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him
+once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried
+council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one.
+Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim
+Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without
+a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for
+going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should
+promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy
+exhaustion, starvation and failure.
+
+We grew hot upon it, Richard and I; he with a young lover's unrecking
+rashness, and I with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn;
+and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba drew aside and let us have it out.
+Dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not
+above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age
+in my face and swearing hotly that I knew not so much as the alphabet of
+love.
+
+The taunts were passed in silence, since I would set them over against
+the irrevocable wrong I had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he
+could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of
+jealous wrath.
+
+But when he would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all
+unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a
+long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The
+hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer
+heat we would be forced to kill daily. On the other hand, with horses, a
+bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should be in some more
+hopeful case; and, notwithstanding the delay in starting, could make far
+better speed.
+
+For all the good it did I might have spared my pains and saved my
+breath. Jennifer broke me in the midst, crying out that I was even now
+killing the precious minutes; and so our ill-starred venture had its
+launching in the frenzied haste that seldom makes for speed. One small
+concession I wrung out of his impatience--this with the help of Yeates
+and the Catawba. We went back to the breakfast camp, rekindled the fire,
+and cooked what we could keep and carry of the venison.
+
+In spite of this delay it was yet early in the forenoon of that
+memorable Sunday, the twentieth of August, when we set our faces
+southward and took up the line of march to the ford of the ambushment.
+By now the sky was wholly overcast, and the wind was blowing fresher in
+the tree-tops; but though as yet the storm held off, the air was the
+cooler for the threatened rain and this was truly a blessing, since the
+old hunter put us keen upon our mettle to keep pace with him.
+
+We marched in Indian file, Ephraim Yeates in the lead, Uncanoola at his
+heels, and the two of us heavier-footed ones bringing up the rear.
+Knowing the wooded wilderness by length and breadth, the old man held on
+through thick and thin, straight as an arrow to the mark; and so we had
+never a sight of the road again till we came out upon it suddenly at the
+ford of violence.
+
+Here I should have been in despair for the lack of any intelligible hint
+to point the way; and I think not even Jennifer, with all his woodcraft,
+could have read the record of the onfall as Yeates and the Catawba did.
+But for all the overlapping tangle of moccasin and hoof prints neither
+of these men of the forest was at fault, though ten minutes later even
+their skill must have been baffled, inasmuch as the first few spitting
+raindrops were pattering in the tree-tops when we came upon the ground.
+
+"That's jest about what I was most afeard of," said the borderer, with a
+hasty glance skyward. "Down on your hunkers, Chief, and help me read
+this sign afore the good Lord takes to sending His rain on the jest and
+the unjest," and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground
+like trained dogs nosing for a scent.
+
+We stood aside and watched them, Richard and I, realizing that we were
+of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the
+laying on of hearty blows. After the closest scrutiny, which took
+account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged
+until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in
+the dusty road, Yeates and the Indian gave over and came to join us
+under the sheltering branches of an oak.
+
+"'Tis a mighty cur'is sign; most mighty cur'is," quoth the hunter,
+slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his
+rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every
+precious grain. "Ez I allow, I never heerd tell of any Injuns a-doing
+that-away afore; have you, Chief? hey?"
+
+The Catawba's negative was his guttural "Wah," and Ephraim Yeates,
+having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his
+powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.
+
+"Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying. Them Injuns fixed up an ambush_ment_,
+blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up
+with a tomahawk and knife rush,--lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb
+daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. And, spite of all this here
+rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole
+enduring scrimmage! Mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? And that ain't
+all: some o' them same Injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing
+boots with spurs onto 'em. What say, Chief?"
+
+Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other.
+"Sebben Injun; one pale-face," he said, in confirmation.
+
+I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty
+curse to speed it.
+
+"Falconnet!" said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.
+
+"'Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon," drawled
+Yeates. "Maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving
+at."
+
+Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent. 'Twas out of all reason
+to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a
+terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. It was a curious
+mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.
+
+"And yit that ain't all. Whilst some o' the Injuns was a-whooping it up
+acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their
+city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the
+side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks
+him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after
+which he climbs _his_ hoss and makes tracks hisself--not to ketch up
+with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across
+the creek and down the road to the southward.
+
+Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest
+fashion, and after all could only say: "You are sure you have the
+straight of it, Eph?"
+
+The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. "Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of
+your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read
+them sign like they'd ort to be read?"
+
+"Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye--sharp nose--sharp tongue, sometime.
+Sign no can lie when he read 'um."
+
+Jennifer turned to me. "What say you, Jack? 'Tis all far enough beyond
+me, I'll confess."
+
+I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do
+seemed plain enough.
+
+"Never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis Mistress Margery's hazard that
+concerns us," I would say. And then to Ephraim Yeates: "Will this rain
+kill the trail, think you?"
+
+He shook his head dubiously. "I dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o'
+differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. Ez it starts out, with
+the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the
+run."
+
+"Then let us be at it," said I. "We can very well afford to let the
+mystery untangle itself as we go." And with this the pursuit began in
+relentless earnest.
+
+The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right
+angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the
+stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in
+the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could
+follow at a smart dog-trot.
+
+In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied
+Jennifer and me. They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the
+racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse.
+Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when,
+well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and
+to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow
+Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and
+gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.
+
+This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began
+again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail,
+measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars
+for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. When we came up with
+him he was mumbling to himself.
+
+"Um-hm; jes' so. They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure;
+larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. Now, says I to
+myself, what's the tarnation hurry? Ain't they got all the time there is
+to get where they're a-going, immejitly, _if_ not sooner?" Then he
+turned upon me. "Cap'n John, can't you and the youngster lay your heads
+side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up
+to? It do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that
+Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave
+a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could
+follow at a canter."
+
+Richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was
+to the full as blank as his. I made sure some deep-laid plot was at the
+bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the
+wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and
+sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all
+its devilish ingenuity.
+
+But now "Forward," was the word, and we fell in line again, and again
+the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack
+of weariness. Happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day
+dusk came early; and though Yeates and the Indian, running now with
+their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long
+after Richard Jennifer and I were bat-blind for any seeing of the
+hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were,
+fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a
+scanty supper.
+
+After the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter
+fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to
+sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the
+full as miserable.
+
+Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget;
+a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and
+step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous
+hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame
+for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp
+foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her
+into sending the appeal for help?
+
+With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message,
+hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own.
+Though I made sure she did not love me,--had never loved me as other
+than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
+the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
+her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.
+
+Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
+what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
+were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
+been sent.
+
+His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
+his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
+creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to
+spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
+him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.
+
+I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
+shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
+doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,
+making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of
+some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in
+that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender
+chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time
+when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in
+her service.
+
+So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of
+service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather
+fresh strength for the new day's measure.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE
+
+
+'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to
+picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in
+the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details
+have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are
+often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.
+
+So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest
+ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper
+and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the
+plain-marked trail to guide us.
+
+At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles
+of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the
+August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the
+pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling
+mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no
+woman-ridden horse could penetrate.
+
+One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances
+would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with
+here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn,
+whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and
+arabesques against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain
+would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the
+trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay,
+sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.
+
+Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of
+fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in
+a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting
+us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a
+soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless
+mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or
+exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop
+forever.
+
+This was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of
+strenuous onpressing. But through that web the scarlet thread of famine
+shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the
+days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair
+skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present
+specter of starvation.
+
+You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty
+memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts
+the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him
+onward. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned
+upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. One was Yeates's
+killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we
+had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's
+code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also,
+I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the
+hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And,
+being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the
+hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.
+
+The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days
+farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we
+could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and
+enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for
+game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for
+another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along
+the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this
+haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or
+to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and
+now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to
+the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the
+famine edge of hunger.
+
+For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on
+any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the
+unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to
+set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian
+there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the
+less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and
+held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old
+hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can
+close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates,
+striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry
+and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest
+discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder.
+Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been
+less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his
+own would have shamed us into following where he led.
+
+We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the
+pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before
+Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing
+in upon our quarry.
+
+The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the
+beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching
+out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless
+well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their
+impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let
+us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper
+food soon took toll of speed.
+
+So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last
+so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires
+were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer--could
+hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent
+us double.
+
+The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the
+fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air
+in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an
+oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher
+with every added mile of westering.
+
+The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a
+rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly
+from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part
+of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly
+sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim
+Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped
+behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running
+at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped
+and swallowed him.
+
+A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless
+noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good
+time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted
+echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's
+rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all
+a-clamor with mocking repetitions.
+
+"Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the
+marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "That there's what comes
+o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the
+gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you
+two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them
+sharp-p'inted sticks in his--The Lord be praised for all His marcies!
+the chief's got him!"
+
+But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping
+with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell
+had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old
+borderer's bullet.
+
+"Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out
+of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and
+fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.
+
+This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a
+little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well
+in hand. So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by
+a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. Nevertheless, we
+were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew
+to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither
+seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.
+
+That night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a
+swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. We reached
+this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into
+the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. But
+though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was
+exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to
+wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.
+
+We guessed at it a while, Richard and I, and then gave it up until we
+might have the help of better daylight. But the old borderer's curiosity
+was not so readily postponed. Cutting a slim pole from a sapling
+thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping
+branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond
+a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for
+swimming.
+
+Satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us
+to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his
+long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes
+the nearer to the ground.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR
+
+
+Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us cause
+to wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indian
+pipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipe
+was aglow he told us of his findings.
+
+"'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spell
+to throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up."
+
+"That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?" said I; for
+the night was black as Erebus.
+
+"Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts," this as calmly as
+if we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-defined
+trace of foot-prints. "Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped on
+t'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. I
+saw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals."
+
+"Thank God!" says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the women
+were already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with an
+eager question: "How does she look, Ephraim?--tell me how she looks!"
+
+"Listen at him!" said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "How
+in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about?
+There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been
+dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week.
+Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on
+'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' last
+idintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a couple
+of Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmints
+their orders, partic'lar."
+
+Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.
+
+"Show us the way, Eph Yeates!" he burst out impatiently. "We are wasting
+a deal of precious time!"
+
+But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making no
+move to head a sortie.
+
+"Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o'
+hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full
+redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez
+soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle
+down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly,
+_if_ not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by
+rampaging 'round too soon."
+
+There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited,
+taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and laying
+our plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, or
+rather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move upon
+the enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover the
+ford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed,
+we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal,
+which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in and
+smite, giving no quarter.
+
+The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, saying
+that a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Erati
+tribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.
+
+"Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-setting
+on ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. With
+them gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for a
+skimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore and
+wherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and come
+again, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer."
+
+Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth that
+we were not like to be over-merciful.
+
+But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspected
+side of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily on
+the sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinced
+a most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hour
+the air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermon
+paused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his knees
+to pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories of
+the grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.
+
+Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully
+understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he
+was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness
+that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin or
+red coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that
+British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very
+edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall
+upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his
+prayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scriptural
+anathema upon the enemy.
+
+Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most
+godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that
+since he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--he
+would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon
+his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have
+said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the
+sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of
+place.
+
+It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead
+piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but
+when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to
+me.
+
+"What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I
+reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here
+purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's."
+
+Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have
+not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to
+weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to
+strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil
+moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old
+field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward
+the dawn.
+
+Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little
+good-will.
+
+"I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted,
+angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst
+you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no
+soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your
+damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these very
+present seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down in
+the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully
+over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.
+
+Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the
+old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck
+of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping
+through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time
+precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.
+
+Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept
+down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of
+crossing.
+
+Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of
+quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.
+
+Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse
+to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire
+like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. The
+seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins,
+which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.
+Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest
+sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half
+awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm
+and he was nodding to forgetfulness.
+
+Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I
+could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.
+
+"It should be easy enough--what think you?" he whispered; and then, with
+a sudden grasp upon my wrist: "You are cool and steady-nerved, John
+Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!"
+
+"Nay, I grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitement
+would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added,
+sincerely enough: "She has never given me the right to love her at all."
+
+"God help her at this pass!" he said, more to himself than to me; and
+then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim
+Yeates for this fresh delay.
+
+It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.
+
+"Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.
+Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe Captain
+Jennif' see 'um, hey?"
+
+At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were
+nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The
+Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared
+to be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only
+one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eye
+on war-path!"
+
+Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within
+arm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but the
+old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle
+to my fingers' ends.
+
+"How will it be, Eph?" Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We can
+make it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!"
+
+But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.
+
+"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick.
+She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like
+greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought
+n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country;
+but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the
+ford where them varmints made out to cross."
+
+"God!" said Dick, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"
+
+The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the
+encampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly and
+clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.
+
+"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whisper
+meant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal,
+Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain't
+in it!"
+
+I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a
+handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry
+wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the
+keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy
+background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in
+orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry
+branches their leader gave the command to charge.
+
+What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest
+space. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings,
+raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.
+As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the
+yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemen
+narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel
+in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and
+vanished as if by magic.
+
+With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the
+sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and
+it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din,
+being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of
+the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and
+when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees,
+the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the
+lady.
+
+"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we
+did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across
+the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.
+
+"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet,
+mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and
+got them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages have
+given us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet,
+calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."
+
+I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months
+since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred,
+and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of
+the captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had
+stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pass
+from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping
+from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe
+her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful
+than ever.
+
+"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said.
+"You have come to take us back to my father?"
+
+He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.
+
+"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.
+But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know,
+and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are here
+only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for
+theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to
+the west; but I do assure you--"
+
+She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a
+despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing
+hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and
+wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all
+that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if
+only with a single soldier for a guard.
+
+'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he
+had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his
+life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused
+her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his
+suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a
+true, clean-hearted woman at bay.
+
+"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain
+Falconnet?" she said.
+
+"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these
+brutal savages, Mistress Margery?"
+
+She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down
+and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the
+scornful eyes were whipping him.
+
+"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in
+the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I
+saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken
+freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor
+Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."
+
+The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was
+taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have
+dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.
+
+"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did
+with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?
+'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for my
+game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,
+be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme
+desespere, ma cherie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry
+you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might
+have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go
+where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady
+Falconnet!"
+
+The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,
+was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four
+would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;
+nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of
+us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would
+be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.
+
+So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass and
+brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised
+his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because
+the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare
+the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come
+within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping
+coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we
+would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped
+us with a hand for each.
+
+"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats,
+and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.
+Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a
+good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that
+ain't teched yet."
+
+It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear
+doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and
+not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless
+little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.
+
+"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she
+said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having
+the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is
+all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."
+
+"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his
+horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the
+women, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, Mistress
+Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's
+house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry
+you for very shame's sake!"
+
+It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has
+ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian
+discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide
+snake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think
+she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight
+helped her to say, quickly:
+
+"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."
+
+His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith with
+me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"
+
+He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set
+her foot upon the weapon in the grass.
+
+"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the
+occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are
+has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save
+you from that, my Mistress."
+
+She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured
+and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one
+who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.
+
+"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing him
+bravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will give
+me leave to die as my mother's daughter should."
+
+"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we
+looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses,
+and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives
+as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers
+of the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and
+on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the
+horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.
+
+Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse
+me bitterly.
+
+"Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments,
+John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had
+good hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and that
+hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"
+
+He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew,
+and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would
+eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in
+sheer abandonment of rage and misery.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS
+
+
+You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to
+me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our
+chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to
+attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to
+the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford
+beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the
+earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.
+
+So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of
+afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame
+as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.
+
+"Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair _and_ easy," he protested. "Let's give
+that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow,
+there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things.
+To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here
+dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had
+ne'er a man o' God 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going
+to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n Dick did try his hand that-away."
+
+"True; and I would now we had listened to him," said I, gloomily enough.
+"We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another.
+Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder
+train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered
+us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy
+forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my
+Lord Cornwallis's headquarters."
+
+The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for
+merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could
+understand.
+
+"Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from
+yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I
+be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead."
+
+Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on
+the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope
+when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a
+certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long
+after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the
+full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.
+
+"That's the kind o' talk!" was the old man's comment. "Now we'll set to
+work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is
+crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe
+you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd
+vouchsafe to give us scalps _and_ provender. For our onfaithfulness He's
+seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a
+widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness,
+yit."
+
+So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when
+Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should
+make another effort to find the ford.
+
+"There's nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into
+trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way
+cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n Dick
+rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only
+say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the
+chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when
+his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone
+over his head. Selah!"
+
+Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy
+dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far
+beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along
+the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel
+and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had
+lost.
+
+"Right about here-away is where they made out to cross," he announced;
+"the whole enduring passel of 'em, ez I reckon--our seven varmints and
+the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till
+we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side."
+
+We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's
+edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and
+so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the
+water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there
+was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our
+faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with
+the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.
+
+Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's horsemen set us
+warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been
+left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.
+
+"Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left
+behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I
+was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last
+living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the
+belly-pinch."
+
+So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune
+favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two
+horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag
+of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive
+party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.
+
+With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And
+now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few
+handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn
+stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag
+of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on
+our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn
+into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the
+baking-stones.
+
+In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard
+bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten--with
+what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever
+know--we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and
+far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had
+entangled us.
+
+For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear
+lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and
+sure; a _coup de main_ which should atone in one shrewd push for the
+sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to
+the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else
+to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.
+
+You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and
+protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old
+chronicler's day.
+
+Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh
+that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century
+nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on--in the story-books. Also, I
+would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace
+of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call "heroics"
+were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural
+heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm
+that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean
+fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry
+world to live in.
+
+So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and,
+after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us
+while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to snatch an hour
+or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin
+afresh.
+
+In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw
+not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid
+on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: "Are you waking yet,
+Jack?"
+
+I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and
+shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse
+me.
+
+"You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a
+friend--to fly out at you like a madman as I did," he added, by way of
+fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding
+him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.
+
+"The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as
+you will some day know, Dick, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward
+always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never
+make.
+
+He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.
+
+"Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to
+blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I
+owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in
+that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left
+me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas--"
+
+"Damn you!" I broke in roughly, "will you never have done and go to
+sleep?" And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh
+bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY
+
+
+Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the
+wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping
+unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the
+enemy.
+
+But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that the
+players rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, never
+faltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip their
+kinship with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not so
+endowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase,
+with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakeful
+eye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept;
+would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice as
+great.
+
+We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, and
+were the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter was
+already out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and was
+grinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. Dick sat up in
+his leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.
+
+"Lord, Jack," said he; "if ever we win out of this coil with a full day
+to spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, I
+promise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough to
+leave a bad taste in the mouth."
+
+"Aye; but the taste may be washed out," said I. "I am for a dip in the
+river; what say you?"
+
+He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in the
+spring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.
+'Twas most marvelous refreshing; and with appetites sharp set and
+whetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in time
+to give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with the
+hindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across his
+shoulders.
+
+Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of the
+dawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we were
+made to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the early
+morning scouting.
+
+Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle of
+reconnaissance around our halting place, "to get the p'ints of the
+compass," as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we had
+found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and
+well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder
+train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and
+arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short
+march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's
+position.
+
+For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. The
+Indian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of the
+cavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straight
+into the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rocky
+defile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements to
+narrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to a
+thundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powder
+convoy had vanished into thin air.
+
+Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.
+We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women;
+but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the
+powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were
+wholly unprepared.
+
+So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched;
+and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we had
+broken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to the
+gorge of disappearance.
+
+On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left
+swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for
+its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and
+lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valley
+narrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base of
+the tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on the
+right.
+
+In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's
+stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the
+right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and
+plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side
+of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down
+into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.
+
+As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve the
+mystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouring
+torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the
+cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended
+abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the
+low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet
+and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier
+stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed
+it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently
+came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof
+print, new or old.
+
+"Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est
+thing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, when
+we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to
+the mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?"
+
+Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go
+down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?"
+
+The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative.
+"Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the
+good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'
+the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of
+up."
+
+We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a
+fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its
+underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed
+into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood
+which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive
+with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was
+only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates
+caught at it eagerly.
+
+"Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take
+an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!
+Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'
+sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"
+
+I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick
+asked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?"
+
+The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety
+of it in words.
+
+"Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened
+the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"
+
+"Why, fire," says Richard, beginning, as I did, to see some glimmering
+of light.
+
+"In course. And it come from yonder, didn't it?" pointing to the cavern
+under the cliff. "More than that, 'twas cut wi' a hatchet--this fresh
+end of it--no longer ago than last night, at the furdest; the pitch that
+the fire fried out'n it is all soft and gummy, yit. Gentlemen all:
+whenst we find where this here creek comes out into daylight again we're
+a-going to find the hoss-captain and the whole enduring passel o'
+redskins and redcoats, immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
+
+What comment this startling announcement would have evoked I know not,
+for at the moment of its utterance the Catawba went flat upon the
+ground, making most urgent signs for us to do likewise. What he had seen
+we all saw a flitting instant later; the painted face of a Cherokee
+warrior as a setting for a pair of fierce basilisk eyes peering out of
+the low-arched cavern whence the stream issued, an apparition looking
+for all the world like a dismembered head floating on the surface of the
+outgushing flood.
+
+'Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat,
+and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers. A crook in the
+stream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from the
+basilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another into
+the mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.
+
+Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main river;
+but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows in
+passing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain a
+great boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon the
+scene of our late surprisal.
+
+By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage for
+a tragedy which might have been ours. One by one a score of heads with
+painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one
+the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the
+water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the
+stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching
+figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.
+
+Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his
+thigh.
+
+"They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillern
+and simples," he whispered. "Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up the
+trace a hour 'r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o' that there spy, and
+was too dad-blame' biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean."
+
+"What spy?" says Dick, matching the hunter's low whisper.
+
+"Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here 'twixt dawn and
+daybreak, _to_ be sure. He waited till we broke camp and then took out
+up here ahead of us to tell his chief 'twas e'ena'most time to set the
+trap for three white simples and a red one. Friends, I'm a-telling ye
+plain that the sperrit's a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on my
+hunkers and--"
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't do it here and now!" gasped Dick. "Let's get
+out of this spider's-web while we may."
+
+The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as it
+would seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerous
+neighborhood of the ambushment. When we had pushed on somewhat higher up
+the gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which it
+served as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.
+
+Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in some
+hidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream was
+one of the approaches, 'twas plain that we must climb to some height
+whence we could command a wider view.
+
+We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used by
+the entire company: this though the conclusion left the vanishing trail
+an unsolved riddle. For if the women could have been dragged through
+the low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not--to
+say nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such a
+passage.
+
+So we addressed ourselves to the ascent of the northern mountain; though
+Richard and I would first beg a little space in which to drain the water
+from our boots, and to wring some pounds' weight of it from our clothes.
+That done, we fell in line once more; and being so fortunate as to hit
+upon a ravine which led to the cliff-crowned summit, the climb was shorn
+of half its toil and difficulty. Nevertheless, by the sun's height it
+was well on in the forenoon before we came out, perspiring, like sappers
+in a steam bath, upon the mountain top.
+
+As Yeates had guessed, this northern mountain proved to be a lofty
+table-land. So far as could be seen, the summit was an undulating plain,
+less densely forested than the valley, but with a thick sprinkling of
+pines to make the still, hot air heavy with their resinous fragrance. As
+it chanced, our ravine of ascent headed well back from the cliff edge,
+so we must needs fetch a compass through the pine groves before we could
+win out to any commanding point of view.
+
+The old borderer took his bearings by the sun and laid the course
+quartering to bring us out as near as might be on the heights above the
+gorge. But when we had gone a little way, a thinning of the wood ahead
+warned us that we were approaching some nearer break in the table-land.
+
+Five minutes later we four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking
+abroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you can
+a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war,
+sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general
+level of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension of
+two miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length;
+bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep,
+forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream winding
+through grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end to
+end of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene we
+looked upon.
+
+But what concerned us most was a sight to make us crouch quickly lest
+sharp eyes below should descry us on the sky-line of the cliff. Pitched
+on one of the grassy savannas by the stream, so fairly beneath us that
+the smallest cannon planted on our cliff could have dropped a shot into
+it, was the camp of the powder train.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+HOW UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR
+
+
+'Twas Richard Jennifer who first broke the noontide silence of the
+mountain top, voicing the query which was thrusting sharp at all of us.
+
+"Now how in the name of all the fiends did they make shift to burrow
+from yonder bag-bottom into this?" he would say.
+
+"Ez I allow, that's jest what the good Lord fotched us here for--to find
+out," was Yeates's rejoinder. "Do you and the chief, Cap'n John,
+circumambylate this here pitfall yon way, whilst Cap'n Dick and I go
+t'other way 'round. By time we've made the circuit and j'ined company
+again, I reckon we'll know for sartain whether 'r no they climm' the
+mounting to get in."
+
+So when we had breathed us a little the circuiting was begun, Ephraim
+Yeates and Jennifer going toward the lower end of the sink, and the
+Catawba and I in the opposite direction.
+
+Since we must examine closely every rift and crevice in the boundary
+cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great
+trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony.
+They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell
+you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if
+only he hath ease of his footgear.
+
+Taking it all in all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the
+sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to
+a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was
+level in our faces and the day was waning.
+
+Coming together again, we made haste to compare notes. There was little
+enough to add to the common fund of information, and the mystery of the
+lost trail remained a mystery. True, we, the Indian and I, had found a
+ravine at the extreme upper end of the valley through which, we thought,
+a sure-footed horse might be led at a pinch, up or down; but this ravine
+had not been used by the powder train, and apart from it there was no
+practicable horse path leading down from the plateau.
+
+As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might
+stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity the sunken valley
+was separated from the great gorge without only by a ridge which was no
+more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by
+the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet.
+
+Inasmuch as the most favorable point of espial upon the camp below was
+the cliff whence we had first looked down into the sink, we harked back
+thither, passing around the lower end of the valley and along the
+barrier ridge. Plan we had none as yet, for the preliminary to any
+attempt at a rescue must be some better knowledge of the way into and
+out of Falconnet's cunningly chosen stronghold. True, we might win in
+and out again by the ravine which the chief and I had explored at the
+upper end, and Dick was for trying this when the night should give us
+the curtain of darkness for a shield. But the old hunter would hold this
+forlorn hope in reserve as a last resort.
+
+"Sort it out for yourself, Cap'n Dick," he argued. "Whatsomedever we
+make out to do--four on us ag'inst that there whole enduring army o'
+their'n--has got to be done on the keen jump, with a toler'ble plain
+hoss-road for the skimper-scamper race when it _is_ done. For, looking
+it up and down and side to side, we've got to have hosses--some o' their
+hosses, at that. I jing! if we could jest make out somehow 'r other to
+lay our claws on the beasteses aforehand--"
+
+We had reached the cliff and were once more peering down at the enemy's
+camp. Though for the cliff-shadowed valley it was long past sunset and
+all the depths were blue and purple in the changing half-lights of the
+hour, the shadow veil was but a gauze of color, softening the details
+without obscuring them. So we could mark well the metes and bounds of
+the camp and prick in all the items.
+
+The camp field was the largest of the savannas or natural clearings. On
+the margin of the stream the Indian lodges were pitched in a semicircle
+to face the water. Farther back, Falconnet's troop was hutted in
+rough-and-ready shelters made of pine boughs--these disposed to stand
+between the camp of the Cherokees and the tepee-lodge of the captive
+women which stood among the trees in that edge of the forest hemming the
+slope which buttressed our cliff of observation.
+
+At first we sought in vain for the storing-place of the powder. It was
+the sharp eyes of the Catawba that finally descried it. A rude housing
+of pine boughs, like the huts of the troopers, had been built at the
+base of a great boulder on the opposite bank of the stream; and here was
+the lading of the powder train.
+
+From what could be seen 'twas clear that the camp was no mere bivouac
+for the day; indeed, the Englishmen were still working upon their
+pine-bough shelters, building themselves in as if for a stay indefinite.
+
+"'Tis a rest camp," quoth Dick; "though why they should break the march
+here is more than I can guess."
+
+"No," said Ephraim Yeates. "'Tain't jest rightly a rest camp, ez I take
+it. Ez I was a-saying last night, this here is Tuckasege country, and we
+ain't no furder than a day's running from the Cowee Towns. Now the
+Tuckaseges and the over-mounting Cherokees ain't always on the best o'
+tarms, and I was a wondering if the hoss-captain hadn't sot down here to
+wait whilst he could send a peace-offer' o' powder and lead on to the
+Cowee chiefs to sort o' smooth the way."
+
+"No send him yet; going to send," was Uncanoola's amendment. "Look-see,
+Chelakee braves make haste for load horses down yonder now!"
+
+Again the sharp eyes of the Catawba had come in play. At the foot of the
+great boulder some half dozen of the Cherokees were busy with the powder
+cargo, lashing pack-loads of it upon two horses. One of the group, who
+appeared to be directing the labor of the others, stood apart, holding
+the bridle reins of three other horses caparisoned as for a journey.
+When the loading was accomplished to the satisfaction of the
+horse-holding chieftain, he and two others mounted, took the burdened
+animals in tow, and the small cavalcade filed off down the stream toward
+the apparent _cul de sac_ at the lower end of the valley.
+
+Ephraim Yeates was up in a twinkling, dragging us back from the cliff
+edge.
+
+"Up with ye!" he cried. "Now's our chance to kill two pa'tridges with
+one stone! If we can make out to get down into t'other valley in time to
+see how them varmints come out, we'll know the way in. More'n that, we
+can ambush 'em and so make sartain sure o' five o' the six hosses we're
+a-going to need, come night. But we've got to leg for it like Ahimaaz
+the son of Zadok!"
+
+Thus the old borderer; and being only too eager to come to handgrips
+with the enemy, we were up and running faster than ever Joab's
+messenger ran, long before the old man finished with his Scriptural
+simile.
+
+Not to take the risk of delay on any unexplored short cut, we made
+straight for the ravine of our ascent, found it as by unerring instinct,
+and were presently racing down to the Indian trace in the little upland
+valley above the gorge.
+
+For all the helter-skelter haste I found time to remember that the gorge
+as we had last seen it had been well besprinkled with armed Cherokees
+lying in wait for us. If they were still there we should be like to have
+a hot welcome; and some reminder of this I gasped out to Yeates in mid
+flight.
+
+"Ne'm mind that; if we run up ag'inst 'em anywhere, 'twon't be
+there-away. They've took the hint and quit; scattered out to hunt us
+long ago," was his answer, jerked out between bounds. And after that I
+loosed the Ferara in its sheath and saved my breath as I might for the
+killing business of the moment.
+
+'Twas a sharp disappointment that, for all the haste of our mad scramble
+down the mountain, we were too late to surprise the secret of the
+enemy's stronghold. The Catawba was leading when we dashed down into the
+valley, and one glance sent him flying back to stop us short with a dumb
+show purporting that the quarry was already out of the defile and coming
+up the Indian path.
+
+Richard swore grievously, but the old backwoodsman took the checkmate
+placidly and began to set the pieces for the second game in which the
+horses were the stake, hiding his useless rifle in a hollow tree,--his
+powder had been soaked and spoiled in the early morning plunge for
+life,--and drawing his hunting-knife to feel its edge and point.
+
+"Ez I allow, that fotches us to the hoss-lifting," he said, in his slow
+drawl. Then he laid his commands upon us. "Ord'ly, and in sojer-fashion,
+now; no whooping and yelling. If the hoss-captain's got scouts out
+a-s'arching for us, one good screech from these here varmints we're
+a-going to put out'n their mis'ry 'u'd fix our flints for kingdom come.
+I ain't none afeard o' your nerve,"--this to Richard and me--"leastwise,
+not when it comes to fair and square sojer-fighting. But this here
+onfall has got to be like the smiting o' the 'Malekites--root _and_
+branch; and if ye're tempted to be anywise marciful, jest ricollect that
+for the sake o' them wimmen-folks _we've got to have these hosses_!"
+
+You are not to suppose that he was holding us inactive while he thus
+exhorted us. On the contrary, he was posting us skilfully beside the
+trace like the shrewd old Indian fighter that he was, with a rare and
+practised eye to the maximum of cover with the minimum of thicket tangle
+to impede the rush or to shorten the sword-swing.
+
+But when all was done we were at this disadvantage; that since the enemy
+was close at hand we dared not cross the path to give our trap a jaw on
+either side. To offset this, the Catawba dropped out of line and
+disappeared; and when the Cherokees were no more than a hundred yards
+away, Uncanoola came in sight a like distance in the opposite direction,
+running easily down the path to meet the up-coming riders.
+
+Richard let slip an admiration-oath under his breath. "There's a fine
+bit of strategy for you!" he whispered. "That wily Jack-at-a-pinch of
+ours will befool them into believing that he is a runner from the Cowee
+Towns. 'Tis our cue to lie close; he will halt them just here, and there
+will be roving eyes in the heads of the two who have not to talk."
+
+We had not long to wait. Our cunning ally timed his halting of the
+emissaries to a nicety, and when the three Cherokees drew rein they were
+within easy blade's reach. The powwow, lengthened by Uncanoola till we
+were near bursting with impatience, was spun out wordily, and presently
+we saw the pointing of it. The Catawba was affecting to doubt the
+protests of the emissaries and would have them dismount and prove their
+good faith by smoking the peace-pipe with him.
+
+I give you fair warning, my dears, that you may turn the page here and
+skip what follows if you are fain to be tender-hearted on the score of
+these savage enemies of ours. It was in the very summer solstice of the
+year of violence; a time when he who took the sword was like to perish
+with the sword; and we thought of little save that Margery and her
+handmaiden were in deadliest peril, and that these Indians had five
+horses which we must have.
+
+And as for my own part in the fray, when I recognized in the
+five-feathered chieftain of the three that copper-hued imp of Satan who
+had been the merciless master of ceremonies at the torturing of my poor
+black Tomas, the decent meed of mercy which even a seasoned soldier may
+cherish died within me, and I made sure the steel would find its mark.
+
+So, when Uncanoola drew forth his tobacco pipe and made the three doomed
+ones sit with him in the path to smoke the peace-whiff all around, we
+picked out each his man and smote to slay. The scythe-like sweep of
+Jennifer's mighty claymore left the five-feathered chieftain the shorter
+by a head in the same pulse-beat that the Ferara scanted a second of the
+breath to yell with; though now I recall it, the gurgling death-cry of
+the poor wretch with the steel in his throat was more terrible to hear
+than any war-whoop. As for the old borderer, he was more deliberate.
+Being fair behind and within arm's reach of his man, he seized him by
+the scalp-lock, bent the head backward across his knee--but, faugh!
+these are the merest butcher details, and I would spare you--and myself,
+as well.
+
+While yet this most merciless deed was a-doing, the Catawba bounded to
+his feet and made sure of the horses which were rearing and snorting
+with affright. That done, he must needs gloat, Indian-wise, over his
+fallen adversary, turning the headless body with his foot and gibing at
+it.
+
+"Wah! Call hisself the Great Bear, hey? Heap lie; heap no bear; heap
+nothing, now. Papoose bear no let hisself be trap' that way. No smoke
+peace-pipe--"
+
+But now Ephraim Yeates, standing ear a-cock and motionless, like some
+grim old statue done in leather, cut him short with a sudden, "Hist,
+will ye!" and a twinkling instant later we had other work to do.
+
+"Onto the hosses with this here Injun-meat, ez quick ez the loving
+Lord'll let ye!" was the sharp command. "There's a whole clanjamfrey o'
+the varmints a-coming down the trace, and I reckon ez how we'd better
+scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+WE TAKE THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE
+
+
+Luckily for us the new danger was approaching from the westward. So, by
+dint of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees
+hoist upon the horses, and were able to efface in part the signs of the
+late encounter before the band of riders coming down the Indian path was
+upon us. But there was no time to make an orderly retreat. At most we
+could only withdraw a little way into the wood, halting when we were
+well in cover, and hastily stripping coats and waistcoats to muffle the
+heads of the horses.
+
+So you are to conceive us waiting with nerves upstrung, ready for fight
+or flight as the event should decide, stifling in such pent-up suspense
+as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle.
+Happily, the breath-scanting interval was short. From behind our thicket
+screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely
+footpace down the path. Ephraim Yeates quickly named these new-comers
+for us.
+
+"'Tis about ez I allowed--some o' the Tuckaseges a-scouting down to
+hold a powwow with the hoss-captain. Now, then; if them sharp-nosed
+ponies o' their'n don't happen to sniff the blood--"
+
+The hope was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of
+two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons,
+keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the
+riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged
+the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little
+time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty
+forest was ours to keep or break as we chose.
+
+The old frontiersman was the first to speak.
+
+"Well, friends, I reckon ez how we mought ez well thank the good Lord
+for all His marcies afore we go any furder," he would say; and he doffed
+his cap and did it forthwith.
+
+It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird could wish to look
+upon. The twilight shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering
+in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the
+valley. The hush of nature's mystic hour was abroad, and even the
+swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than
+a stone's cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low
+thunderings. There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and
+the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the
+lightest zephyr hung stark and motionless.
+
+Barring the old borderer, who had gone upon his knees, we stood as we
+were; the Catawba holding the pack horses, and Jennifer and I the three
+that bore the ghastly burdens of mortality. The bodies of the slain had
+been flung across the saddles to balance as they might; and to the
+pommel of that saddle which bore the trunk of the five-feathered
+chieftain, Uncanoola had knotted the grisly head by its scalp-lock to
+dangle and roll about with every restless movement of the horse--a
+hideous death-mask that seemed to mop and mow and stare fearsomely at us
+with its wide-open glassy eyes.
+
+With this background fit for the staging of a scene in Dante Alighieri's
+tragic comedy, the looming mountains, the upper air graying on to dusk,
+and the solemn forest aisles full of lurking shadows, you are to picture
+the old frontiersman, bareheaded and on his knees, pouring forth his
+soul in all the sonorous phrase of Holy Writ, now in thanksgiving, and
+now in most terrible beseechings that all the vials of Heaven's wrath
+might be poured out upon our enemies.
+
+His face, commonly a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now
+ablaze with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of
+supplication he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving,
+asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of
+those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be
+the herald of the wrath of God.
+
+'Twas close upon actual nightfall when the old man rose from his knees
+and, with the rising, put off the beadsman and put on the shrewd old
+Indian fighter. Followed some hurried counselings as to how we should
+proceed, and in these the hunter set the pace for us as his age and vast
+experience in woodcraft gave him leave.
+
+His plan had all the merit of simplicity. Now that we had the horses,
+Richard's notion of an approach from the head of the sunken valley
+became at once the most hopeful of any. So Ephraim Yeates proposed that
+we betake ourselves to the mountain top and to the head of that ravine
+which the Catawba and I had discovered. Here we should leave the horses
+well hidden and secured, make our way down the ravine, and, with the
+stream for a guide, follow the sunken valley to the camp at its lower
+end. Once on the ground without having given the alarm, we might hope to
+free the captives under cover of the darkness; and our retreat up the
+valley would be far less hazardous than any open flight by way of the
+unexplored road the powder train had used.
+
+So said the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this
+_in toto_. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout
+advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet,
+and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he
+proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's plan, leaving
+the fourth to take the hint given by the charred stick and the swimming
+ambush crew, and so penetrating to the valley by the stream cavern, be
+at hand to strike a blow for our dear lady's honor in case of need.
+
+"'Tis a thing to be done, and I am with you, Dick," said I. This before
+Ephraim Yeates could object. "Should there be need for any, two blades
+will be better than one. If it come to blows and we are killed or taken,
+Yeates and the chief must make the shift to do without our help."
+
+As you would guess, the old hunter demurred to this halving of our
+slender force, but we over-persuaded him. If all went well, we were to
+rendezvous on the scene of action to carry out the plan of rescue. But
+if our adventure should prove disastrous, Yeates and Uncanoola were to
+bide their time, striking in when and how they might.
+
+Touching this contingency, I drew the old man aside for a word in
+private.
+
+"If aught befall us, Ephraim,--if we should be nabbed as we are like to
+be,--you are not to let any hope of helping us lessen by a feather's
+weight the rescue chance of the women. You'll promise me this?"
+
+"Sartain sure; ye can rest easy on that, Cap'n John. But don't ye go for
+to let that rampaging boy of our'n upsot the fat in the fire with any o'
+his foolishness. He's love-sick, he is; and there ain't nothing in this
+world so ridic'lous foolish ez a love-sick boy--less'n 'tis a love-sick
+gal."
+
+I promised on my part and so we went our separate ways in the gathering
+darkness; though not until the lashings of the packs had been cut and
+the powder and lead, save such spoil of both as Ephraim Yeates and
+Uncanoola would reserve, had been spilled into the river. As for the
+bodies of the dead Indians, the old hunter said he would let them ride
+till he should come to some convenient chasm for a sepulcher; but I
+mistrusted that he and the Catawba would scalp and leave them once we
+were safely out of sight.
+
+At the parting we took the river's edge for it, Richard and I, keeping
+well under the bank and working our way cautiously down the gorge until
+we were stopped by the pouring cross-torrent of the underground
+tributary. Here we turned short to the left along the margin of the
+barrier stream, and tracing its course across the gorge came presently
+to the northern cliff at the lip of the spewing cavern mouth.
+
+By now the night was fully come and in the wooded defile we could place
+ourselves only by the sense of touch.
+
+"Are you ready, Dick?" said I.
+
+"As ready as a man with a shaking ague can be," he gritted out. "This
+dog's work we have been doing of late has brought my old curse upon me
+and I am like to rattle my teeth loose."
+
+"Let me go alone then. Another cold plunge may be the death of you."
+
+"No," said he, stubbornly. "Wait but a minute and the fever will be on
+me; then I shall be fighting-fit for anything that comes."
+
+So we waited, and I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets.
+Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I
+had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a
+plunge into cold water would make him shrink.
+
+In a little time he felt for my hand and grasped it.
+
+"I'm warm enough now, in all conscience," he said; and with that we
+slipped into the stream.
+
+'Twas a disappointment of the grateful sort to find the water no more
+than mid-thigh deep. The current was swift and strong, but with the
+pebbly bottom to give good footing 'twas possible to stem it slowly.
+Laying hold of each other for the better breasting of the flood we felt
+our way warily to the middle of the pool; felt for the low-sprung cavern
+arch, and for that scanty lifting of it where we hoped to find head room
+between stone above and stream below.
+
+We found the highest part of the arch after some blind groping, and
+making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like
+progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.
+
+I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less,
+no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.
+All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed
+caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the
+room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as
+it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right
+glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me;
+glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.
+
+Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of the rock dragon was
+vastly more terrifying than difficult. Once well within the closely
+drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a
+purchase for the foothold. Better still, when we had passed a
+pike's-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew
+wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to
+lock arms and push on side by side.
+
+From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and
+presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any
+peaceful woodland brook. Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the
+cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking
+straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from
+a narrow breadth of sky.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL
+
+
+Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts
+of the grateful outer air.
+
+"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe in
+his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the
+answer with our finger-tips.
+
+When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most
+simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the
+stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was
+quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In
+some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face
+had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep
+cleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm--that toward the
+upland valley--was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides;
+but the lower end was open.
+
+Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come,
+turning from the Indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier
+stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single
+file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so
+to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.
+
+How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well,
+had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had
+left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we
+might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we
+felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's
+edge in the gorge.
+
+That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into
+the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were
+presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This
+extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide
+and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing
+pebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks
+and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like
+to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side
+passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.
+
+"Softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"
+
+Just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone
+to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew
+his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the
+great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the
+teeth-chattering suffered him:
+
+"What say you, Jack? Shall we rush them? There's naught else for it."
+And then, with a gritting oath: "Oh, damn this cursed chilling!"
+
+I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath
+to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved
+our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the
+crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly
+starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of
+savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two
+sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
+
+As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the
+same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in
+which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless
+of possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the main
+corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped
+past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky
+trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
+
+"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so
+suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak
+without coughing to betray ourselves.
+
+"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "By
+all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his
+peace-offering out yonder on the trace--which same they did not. So
+when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch
+hot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhounds
+win out in time to overtake them!"
+
+"Aye," said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to
+go about our business with the sentries.
+
+But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem
+that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. The
+watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the
+watchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue and
+cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the
+pit-black depths beyond.
+
+Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the
+rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a
+long Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow
+whence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in the
+sunken valley.
+
+"Now God be praised!" quoth Richard most fervently. "Another hour in
+this cursed kennel with the fever on me and I should be a yammering
+loose-wit." And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to
+be at large beneath them.
+
+Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the
+stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the
+enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met no
+let or hindrance in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, the
+Indians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother's
+son of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire built
+before the pine-bough shelters.
+
+Favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-hand
+reconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. As I have
+said, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered the
+steep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed from
+the stream, and from the Indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at the
+water's edge. Here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of the
+Indian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humming
+like the buzzing of a bee-hive. The flap of the tepee-lodge was closely
+drawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap of
+white-ashed embers.
+
+"They are safe as yet, thank God!" says Richard, heaving a most palpable
+sigh of relief. Then, with the fever in his veins to whip his natural
+ardor into hasty action: "'Twill be hours before Eph and the Catawba can
+come in by your upper ravine, Jack, and we shall never have a better
+chance than this. Hold you quiet here, whilst I--"
+
+But I laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardy
+marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan.
+
+"Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?" I would say. "'Twill be risky
+enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that
+great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to
+work in!"
+
+He turned upon me like a pettish child. "Oh, to the devil with your
+stumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. By
+heaven! I'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in your veins!"
+
+"So you have said before. But let that pass, we must bide by our promise
+to Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in present
+peril. Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we
+have the firelight to help. When the time for action comes we must be
+able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be. Come."
+
+'Twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length
+and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp. We had it;
+had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his
+lieutenant and another. The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.
+The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and
+while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less to
+fear from him.
+
+I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of
+usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.
+
+"I know Frank Falconnet better than you do, Jack, for I have known him
+later. He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate
+with the liquor in him. 'Tis lucky we are here. If he do but drink deep
+enough, Margery is like to have need--"
+
+"Hist!" said I; "some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as
+they look."
+
+He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us
+out on the up-valley side of the encampment. Here we could look down
+into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of
+the band were cropping the lush grass. It was the sight of these, and of
+Margery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering
+venture to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but now
+dissuaded Richard Jennifer.
+
+"We shall need another mount, and Mistress Margery's saddle," I said.
+"Lie you close here whilst I play the horse-thief on these reavers."
+
+But my dear lad was rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he
+retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come
+through alive."
+
+"Mayhap," I admitted. "But yet--"
+
+He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an
+extinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire
+had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.
+
+I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man
+had walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.
+
+"Give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shorten
+upon," and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of
+hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by
+the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.
+
+"Follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!" he commanded; and so,
+pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a
+shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer
+shadows of the forest.
+
+When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by
+the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings
+with the Ferara.
+
+"Say, quick! what to do with him, Jack?" he demanded, when I came up;
+and now my slower wit came into play.
+
+"Out of this to some safer dressing-room, and I'll show you," said I;
+and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or
+more.
+
+When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his
+life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan I
+had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in
+train before this trooper should be missed.
+
+So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we
+stripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and
+became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that
+king whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,
+waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the
+boots we stuck fast, and I was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.
+
+The change made,--and you may believe no play-house actor of them all
+ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,--we bound our luckless captive
+hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him
+with only his boots for a memento,--happily for him the night was no
+more than goose-flesh cool,--we raced back to our peeping-place on the
+skirting of the camp ground.
+
+Here Dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable for
+letting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and with
+that I stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy's
+camp.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN WHICH I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE
+
+
+Having so good a disguise, the thing I had set myself to do would seem
+to ask for little more than peaceful boldness held in check by common
+caution.
+
+The point where I had broken cover to step into the circle of fire light
+was nearly equidistant from the Englishmen's camp on the right and the
+horse meadow on the left, so I had not to pass within recognition range
+of the great fire; indeed, I might have skulked in the laurel cover all
+the way, thus coming to the horses unseen by any, but that I was afraid
+Falconnet might miss his trooper. So I thought it best to show myself
+discreetly.
+
+Copying our captive's lounging stride, I first held a sauntering course
+down to the stream's edge, keeping the great camp-fire and the droning
+Indian hive well to the right and far enough aloof to baffle any
+over-curious eye at either. Coming to the stream without mishap, I
+stopped and made a feint of drinking; after which I crossed and climbed
+slowly toward the makeshift powder magazine.
+
+As I have said, the camp was pitched in a small savanna or natural
+clearing on the right bank of the little river. This clearing was
+hedged about by the forest on three sides, and backed by the densely
+wooded steeps and crags of the western cliff. I guessed the compass of
+it to be something more than an acre; not greatly more, since the fire
+at the troop camp lighted all its boundaries.
+
+On the left or opposite bank of the stream there was no intervale at
+all. The ground rose sharply from the water's edge in a rough hillside
+thickly studded and bestrewn with boulders great and small; fallen
+cleavings and hewings from the crags of the eastern cliff. 'Twas at the
+foot of one of the boulders, a huge overhanging mass of weather-riven
+rock facing the camp, that the powder cargo was sheltered; so isolated
+to be out of danger from the camp-fires.
+
+From the hillside just below this powder rock I could look back upon the
+camp _en enfilade_, as an artilleryman would say. Nearest at hand was
+the half-moon of Indian lodges with the hollow of the crescent facing
+the stream, and a caldron fire burning in the midst. Around the fire a
+ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling
+dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer
+ring of squatting figures--the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.
+
+Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the
+savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in
+the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.
+
+On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was
+in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion
+came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.
+
+"Ho, Jack Warden!" he called, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands to
+lift the hail above the chanting of the Indian dancers. "Have a look at
+that shelter whilst you are over there and make sure 'twill shed rain if
+the weather shifts."
+
+Now some such long-range marking down as this was what I had been
+angling for. So I came to attention and saluted in soldierly fashion,
+thereby raising a great laugh among my pseudo-comrades around the
+trooper fire--a laugh that pointed shrewdly to the baronet-captain's
+lack of proper discipline. But that is neither here nor there. Having my
+master's order for it, I climbed to the foot of the powder rock.
+
+Here the bare sight of all the stored-up devastation set me athirst with
+a fierce longing for leave to snap a pistol in the well-laid mine. For
+if these enemies of ours had planned their own undoing they could never
+have given a desperate foeman a better chance. To hold the pine boughs
+of the rude shelter in place they had piled a great loose wall of stones
+around and over the cargo; and the firing of the powder, heaped as it
+was against the backing cliff of the boulder, would hurl these weighting
+stones in a murderous broadside upon the camp across the stream.
+
+But since my dear lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside,
+I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as
+I thirsted to--could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap
+nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not
+have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only
+obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing
+spark out of two bits of stone.
+
+But being otherwise enjoined, as I say, I turned my back upon the
+temptation and held to the business in hand, which was to reach and
+recross the stream higher up and so to come among the horses.
+
+As I had hoped to find them, the saddles were hung upon the branches of
+the nearest trees, Margery's horse-furnishings among them. At first the
+black mare was shy of me, but a gentling word or two won her over, and
+she let me take her by the forelock and lead her deeper into the herd
+where I could saddle and bridle her in greater safety.
+
+My plan to cut her out was simple enough. Trusting to the darkness--the
+horse meadow was far enough from the fires to make a murky twilight of
+the ruddy glow--I thought to lead the mare quietly away up the stream
+and thus on to the foot of that ravine by which we hoped to climb to the
+old borderer's rendezvous on the plateau. But when all was ready and I
+sought to set this plan in action, an unforeseen obstacle barred the
+way. To keep the horses from straying up the valley an Indian sentry
+line was strung above the grazing meadow, and into this I blundered like
+any unlicked knave of a raw recruit.
+
+Had I been armed, the warrior who rose before me phantom-like in the
+laurel edging of the meadow would have had a most sharp-pointed answer
+to his challenge. As it was,--I had left my sword with Jennifer because
+the captured trooper whose understudy I was had left his sword in
+camp,--I tried to parley with the sentry. He knew no word of English,
+nor I of Cherokee; but that deadlock was speedily broken. A guttural
+call summoned others of the horse-keepers, and among them one who spoke
+a little English.
+
+"Ugh! What for take white squaw horse?" he demanded.
+
+"'Tis the captain's order," I replied, lying boldly to fit the crisis.
+
+At that they gave me room; and had I hastened, I had doubtless gone at
+large without more ado. But at this very apex point of hazard I must
+needs play out the part of unalarm to the fool's _envoi_, taking time to
+part the mare's forelock under the head-stall, and looking leisurely to
+the lacings of the saddle-girth.
+
+This foolhardy delay cost me all, and more than all. I was still
+fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my
+Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of
+laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing
+laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me.
+Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white
+of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running
+swiftly for cover to the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an
+escaped Bedlamite as he fled. It asked for no second glance, this
+apparition of the yelling madman; 'twas our captive soldier, foot-loose
+and racing in to raise the hue and cry.
+
+Now you may always count upon this failing in a cautious man, that at a
+crisis he is like to do the unwisest thing that offers. This cutting out
+of Margery's mare was none so vital a matter that I should have risked
+the marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan upon it. Yet having done this very
+thing, I must needs make a bad matter infinitely worse.
+
+Instead of mounting to ride a charge through the camp, and so to draw
+the pursuit after me toward the cavern entrance, as I should, I slapped
+the mare to send her bounding through the guard line, snatched a saddle
+from its oak-branch peg to hurl it in the faces of the sentry group, and
+darting aside, plunged into the laurel thicket to come by running where
+I could and creeping where I must to that place where I had left Richard
+Jennifer.
+
+All hot and exasperated as I was, 'twas something less than cooling to
+find Dick a-double on the ground, holding his sides and laughing like a
+yokel at his first pantomime.
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! did you--did you twig him, Jack?" he gasped. "Saw you ever
+such a mincing puss-in-boots since the Lord made you? Ah! ha! ha!"
+
+"The devil take your ill-timed humor!" I cried. "Up with you, man, and
+let us vanish while we may!"
+
+By this the camp was in a pretty ferment, as you would guess--our late
+captive having had space enough to tell his tale. Drunk or sober,
+Falconnet was afoot and alert, shouting his orders to the Englishmen who
+were scrambling for their arms, and to the Indians who came swarming up
+from the lodges.
+
+Whilst we looked, the Cherokees scattered like a company of trained
+gillies to beat us out of cover; and when the hunt was fairly up, the
+baronet-captain set his men in marching order to surround the wigwam of
+the captives.
+
+As yet there was time for a swift retreat up the valley, or at least for
+the choosing of some battle-field of our own where the enemy need not
+outnumber us twenty to one; and again I urged Richard to bestir himself.
+But it was the sight of Falconnet's troopers deploying to surround the
+tepee-lodge, and not any word of mine, that broke his merriment in the
+midst.
+
+At a bound he was up and handing me my sword.
+
+"Good by, Jack; go you whilst you can. You'll be like to meet Eph and
+the Catawba coming in; turn them back and tell them to bide their time."
+
+"But you?" I would say.
+
+"My place is inside of that soldier-cordon our friend is drawing about
+his dove-cote. I shall be at hand when she needs me, as I promised."
+
+"Aye, so you may be; but not alone," said I; and with that we fell to
+running like a pair of doubling foxes through the wood on the steep
+slope behind the lodge, striving with might and main to gain the laurel
+thicket whence we had made our first reconnaissance before the
+converging lines of the redcoat cordon should close and shut us out.
+
+We did it by the skin of our teeth, diving to cover through the closing
+gap not a second too soon. When we were in and hugging the bare ground
+under the scanty leafing of the laurel, I take no shame in saying that I
+would have given a king's ransom to be at large again. Had there been
+but one of us the covert would have been cramped enough; and I was
+painfully conscious that my borrowed coat of scarlet was but a poor
+thing to hide in.
+
+To make it worse, Falconnet, who had lagged behind at the fire, was now
+heaping fresh fuel on, and this reviving of the blaze made the place as
+light as day. With the nearest links in the redcoat chain no more than a
+pike's-length at our backs, we dared not stir or breathe a word; and,
+all in all, we might have been taken like rats in a trap had any one of
+the sentries on our side of the circle chanced to look behind him.
+
+Having repaired the fire to his liking, the troop-captain came up to
+pass a word or two with his lieutenant. They spoke guardedly, but we
+could hear--could not help hearing.
+
+"You have seen nothing, Gordon?"
+
+"Nothing, as yet."
+
+"Make the round again and tell the men 'twill be ten gold joes and a
+double allowance of liquor to the man who first claps eyes on any one of
+the four."
+
+The subaltern went to carry out the order, and Falconnet fell to pacing
+back and forth before the little wigwam. I could see his face at the
+turn where the firelight fell upon him; 'twas the face of a villain at
+his worst, namely, a villain half in liquor. There was a lurking devil
+of passion peering out of the sensuous eyes; and ever and anon he
+stopped as if to listen for some sound within the captives' lodge.
+
+When the lieutenant returned to make his report, he was given another
+order to cap the first.
+
+"Your line is too close-drawn and too conspicuous," said the captain,
+shortly. "Move the men out fifty paces in advance, and bid them take
+cover."
+
+"They will scarce be within hail of each other at that," says the
+lieutenant.
+
+"Near enough, with ten gold pieces to sharpen their eyesight. Go you
+with them and hold them to their work."
+
+The line was presently extended as the order ran, each link in the
+cordon chain advancing fifty paces on its front into the forest. Dick
+fetched a deep sigh of relief; and I thought less of the thin-leafed
+cover and the scarlet coat of me.
+
+Falconnet had resumed the pacing of his sentry beat before the lodge,
+but when his men were out of sight and hearing he stopped short and
+stole on tiptoe to lay his ear to the flap.
+
+"So, you are awake, Mistress Margery? Send your woman out. I would speak
+with you--alone."
+
+There was no reply, but we could both hear the low anguished voice of
+our dear lady praying for help in this her hour of trial. Dick inched
+aside to give me room, freeing his weapon, as I did mine. We were not
+over-quiet about it, but the captain of horse was too hot upon his own
+devil's business to look behind him.
+
+Having no answer from within, he stooped to loose the flap. It was
+pegged down on the inside. He rose and whipped out his sword; the
+firelight fell upon his face again and we saw it as it had been the face
+of a foul fiend from the pit.
+
+"Open!" he commanded; and when there was neither reply nor obedience, he
+cut the flap free with his sword and flung it back.
+
+The two women within the wigwam were on their knees before a little
+crucifix hanging on the lodge wall. So much we saw as we broke cover and
+ran in upon the despoiler. Then the battle-madness came upon us and I,
+for one, saw naught but the tense-drawn face of a swordsman fighting for
+his life--a face in which the hot flush of evil passion had given place
+to the ashen graying of fear.
+
+We drove at him together, Dick and I, and so must needs fall afoul of
+each other clumsily, giving him time to spring back and so to miss the
+claymore stroke which else would have shorn him to the middle. Then
+ensued as pretty a bit of blade work as any master of the old
+cut-and-thrust school could wish to see; and through it all this king's
+captain of horse seemed to bear a charmed life.
+
+There was no punctilio of the code of honor in this duel _a outrance_.
+Knowing our time was short, we fought as men who fight with halters
+round their necks; not to decide a nice point at issue, but to kill this
+accursed villain as we would kill a mad dog or a venomous reptile whose
+living on imperiled the life and honor of the woman we loved.
+
+Thrice, whilst I held him in play, Dick rushed in to end it with a
+scythe-sweep of the broadsword; and thrice the Scottish death was turned
+aside by the flashing circle of steel wherewith the man striving
+shrewdly to gain time made shift to shield himself.
+
+Yet it was not in flesh and blood to fend the double onslaught for more
+than some brief minute or two. Play as he would--and no
+_schlaegermeister_, of my old field-marshal's picked troop could best him
+at this game of parry and defense--he must give ground step by step;
+slowly at the pressing of the Ferara, and in quick backward leaps when
+the great broadsword bit at him.
+
+For the first few bouts he withstood us in grim silence. But now Richard
+cut in again and the claymore stroke, less skilfully turned aside,
+brought him to his knees. This broke his bull courage somewhat, and
+though he was afoot and on guard before my point could reach him, he
+began to bellow lustily for help.
+
+As you would suppose, the call was all unneeded. At the first clash of
+steel the outlying troopers were up and swarming to the rescue; and now
+on all sides came the trampling rush of the in-closing cordon line.
+
+Had Falconnet held his ground a moment longer he would have had us fast
+in the jaws of the trooper-trap; but 'tis the fatal flaw in mere brute
+courage that it will break at the pinch. No sooner did the volunteer
+captain catch a glimpse of his up-coming reinforcements than he must
+needs show us a clean pair of heels, running like a craven coward and
+shouting madly to his men to close with us and cut us down.
+
+"After him!" roared Dick, who was by now as rage-mad as any berserker;
+and with a cut and thrust to right and left for the nipping trap-jaws we
+were out and away in chase.
+
+Now you may mark this as you will; that whilst the devil hath need of
+his bond-servant he will come between with a miracle if need be to keep
+the villain breath of life in his vassal. Three bounds beyond the
+closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp
+field; and here the devil's miracle was wrought. Out of the forest
+fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it
+seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees--the detachment we had met in
+the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the
+pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.
+
+"Back to back, lad!" I shouted; and 'twas thus we met their onslaught.
+
+In such a fray as that which followed 'tis the trivial things that leave
+their mark upon the memory. For one, I recall the curious thrill of
+master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer's great shoulder
+muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore. For
+another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my
+second--or mayhap 'twas the third--gushed out upon my sword hand, and I
+remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the
+pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and
+try in the death throe to withdraw it.
+
+But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free
+the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space
+they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so
+thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I
+was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER
+
+
+Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more
+than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping
+recovery. But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open
+savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through
+the midst.
+
+To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart
+a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of
+the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry
+branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges
+of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other
+savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.
+
+So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was
+not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage
+fashion. But Richard Jennifer--what had become of him? A sound, half
+sigh, half groan, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I
+was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my
+poor lad.
+
+"Dick!" I cried.
+
+He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a
+smile as loving-tender as a woman's.
+
+"Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
+you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."
+
+"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.
+
+"In the same onset. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that
+back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot," this with an inching
+nod toward a row of naked bodies propped sitting against a fallen tree;
+nine of them in all, one with its severed head between its knees, and
+three others showing the gaping hacks and hewings of the great
+broadsword.
+
+"They've fetched them here to see us burn," he went on. "But by the
+gods, we have the warrant of two good blades and Ephraim Yeates's
+hunting-knife that the only fires they'll ever see are those of hell."
+
+"Yeates?" I queried. "Then they have taken him and the Catawba, as
+well?"
+
+"Not alive, you may be sure, else we should have them for company. But
+it has a black look for our friends that the flying column we met in the
+stream-cave came back so soon. Moreover, the bodies of the three
+peace-pipe smokers were found and brought in; that will be the Great
+Bear holding his head in his hands at the end of yonder bloody
+masquerade."
+
+"I guessed as much. God rest our poor comrades!"
+
+"Aye; and God help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we
+have signed her death warrant with our bunglings."
+
+"If it were only death!" I groaned.
+
+"'Tis just that, Jack," said he; "no better, mayhap, but no worse. When
+we were downed by that screeching mob, she was out and on her knees to
+Falconnet, beseeching him to spare us. He put her off smoothly at first,
+saying 'twas the Indians' affair--that they would not be balked of their
+vengeance by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more
+piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as
+swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour
+she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English
+gentleman."
+
+"Well?" said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.
+
+"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she
+had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have
+spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said.
+'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'"
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble of
+redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the
+block."
+
+"She will do it, think you?" I queried, fearful lest she would, but more
+fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.
+
+"Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr blood in her
+on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And God
+nerve her to it, say I."
+
+I said "Amen" to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as
+condemned men on the gallows the busy preparations for our taking off.
+
+Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me
+most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against
+the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures
+of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now,
+some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their
+bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.
+
+I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me
+fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista to
+where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly
+upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering
+the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me
+irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review
+again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the
+circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom
+Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.
+
+While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were
+strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle
+to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have
+put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.
+
+"'Tis the death song for the slain," said Richard; and while it lasted,
+this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping
+dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us
+spellbound.
+
+But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers. In its
+dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the
+dancers turned as one man to face us.
+
+I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a
+horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of
+blood bent upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone
+before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet,
+as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.
+
+The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound
+us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst
+the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.
+
+"'Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us
+freedom to shrink and dodge. Look straight before you and never flinch a
+hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!"
+
+"Trust me," said I. "We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to
+give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name
+us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough."
+
+The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.
+He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at
+me.
+
+That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the
+others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I
+would think, to split my skull. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh
+masterful enough to override the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to
+hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by
+a hair's-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.
+
+"Bravo! well met!" cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: "Here
+comes mine."
+
+As he spoke, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull
+crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark--I could
+not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting laugh gave me
+leave to breathe again.
+
+The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood
+out quickly one after another and for a little space the air was full of
+hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous skill
+of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the
+victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the
+thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales
+with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians
+of ours threw well and skilfully; 'tis a part of the only trade they
+know--the trade of war--to send a weapon true to the mark. None the
+less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the
+cloth of sleeve or body covering--and the flesh beneath it, as well.
+
+Dick had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running
+fire of taunts and gibing flings at the marksmen, I could hear the
+gritting oaths aside when they pinked him.
+
+Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet,
+sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the
+helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs of
+death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll on fortitude than
+did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing erect. 'Tis no
+figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a
+kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the
+agony of it.
+
+Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the
+crueler refinements of these ante-burning torments; the flaying alive by
+inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the
+flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught of this;
+and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn
+us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the
+wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or
+four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.
+
+'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage
+as these barbarians go, thrust a bit of paper into my hand, and gave me
+time to glance its message out by the light of the fire. 'Twas a line
+from Margery; and this is what she said:
+
+     _Dear Heart:
+
+     Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your good
+     friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone, my lion-hearted
+     one. I am praying the good God to give you dying grace, and me
+     the courage to follow you quickly. Margery.
+
+     This by the hand of Tallachama._
+
+For one brief instant a wave of joy caught and flung me upon its highest
+crest, and all these savage tormentors could do to me became as naught.
+Then the true meaning of this her brave _Ave atque vale_ smote me like a
+space-flung meteor, and the joy-wave became an ocean of despair to
+engulf me in its blackest depths. The letter was never meant for me;
+'twas for Richard Jennifer, who, as she would think, must know the
+story of her marriage to his friend and must believe her love went with
+the giving of her hand. And she named him Lion-Heart because he was
+brave, and true, and strong, like that first English Richard of the
+kingly line.
+
+I thrust the message back upon the bearer of it, begging him in dumb
+show to give it quickly to my companion. I knew not at the time if he
+did it, being so crushed and blinded by this fresh misery. But when the
+Indians drew off to ring us in a chanting circle for the final act, I
+would not let the lad see my face for fear he might fathom the
+heart-break in me and know the cause of it.
+
+'Twas at this crisis, when all was ready and one had run to fetch the
+fire, that I heard a smothered oath from Dick and saw the Indian who was
+coming up to fire the wood heaps drop his brand and tread upon it.
+
+"Ecod!" said a voice, courtier-like and smoothly modulated. "'Tis most
+devilish lucky I came, Captain Ireton. Another moment and they would
+have grilled you in the king's uniform--a rank treason, to say naught of
+poor Jack Warden left without a clout to cover him."
+
+It needed not the glance aside to name mine enemy. But I would not
+pleasure him with an answer. Neither would Richard Jennifer. He stood
+silent for a little space, smiling and nursing his chin in one hand, as
+his habit was. Then he spoke again.
+
+"I came to bid you God-speed, gentlemen. You tumbled bravely into my
+little trap. I made no doubt you'd follow where the lady led, and so you
+did. But you'll turn back from this, I do assure you, if there be any
+virtue in an Indian barbecue."
+
+At this Richard could hold in no longer.
+
+"Curse you!" he gritted. "Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair
+to draw us out of hiding?"
+
+"Truly," said this arch-fiend, smiling again. "Most unluckily for you,
+you both stood in my way,--you see I am speaking of it now as a thing
+past,--and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one
+stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in."
+
+"Have done!" choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. "Give
+place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!"
+
+"At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked
+meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a
+marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that
+call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while
+ago." And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away,
+forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's
+uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.
+
+The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among
+the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the
+fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.
+
+"Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from
+my poor Dick.
+
+His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but
+upon his malady, the tertian fever.
+
+"Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these
+cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and
+that will break my heart!"
+
+Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it
+looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the
+chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and
+thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me
+gasp and strangle at the finish.
+
+For a little time after the sucking in of that first
+smoke-breath--nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to
+die by fire--I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by
+anticipation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a
+sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely
+troubled.
+
+So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their
+weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and
+yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily
+to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and
+felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through
+the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as
+marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures
+stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.
+
+'Twas Dick's voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that
+broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in
+panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.
+
+"One word, Jack, before we go--go to our own place. He said--he said she
+would be free to--to marry him. Tell me ... O God in Heaven!"
+
+His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of
+flame, yet I must needs add to it.
+
+"Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear
+me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you'll
+forgive--"
+
+Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and
+through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with
+green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon
+by smothering us out of hand.
+
+With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full
+to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I
+called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and
+his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful
+grimaces of the death throe.
+
+You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away
+for very pity's sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames,
+as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.
+
+There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The
+fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of
+flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that
+lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on
+shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the
+dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering
+triumph.
+
+Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now
+above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames
+a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze
+swept through the tree-tops.
+
+So now I would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He
+gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to
+drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind;
+a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring
+flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the
+dulled senses once more keenly alert.
+
+With the wind came the rain, a passing summer-night's shower of great
+drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing
+in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous
+droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it,
+came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the
+savanna--this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain's whistle
+shrilling the assembly.
+
+While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel
+and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full
+cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of
+the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form
+burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand
+plucked me out of the scorching hell-pit.
+
+If I did aught to help it was all mechanical. I do remember dimly some
+fierce struggle to free my legs from the blazing tangle; this, and the
+swelling sob of joy at the sight of the faithful Catawba hacking at
+Dick's lashings and dragging him also free of the fire. And you may
+believe the welcome tears came to ease the pain of my seared eyes when
+my poor lad--I had thought him gone past human help--took two staggering
+steps and flung his arms about my neck.
+
+Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In
+a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind
+the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants
+so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them
+lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of
+us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow
+flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock
+like that of an earthquake.
+
+The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most
+awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great
+powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff
+itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba
+sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm
+for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.
+
+But Dick hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the
+crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed
+ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself
+down, crying as if his heart would break.
+
+"O God! she's lost, she's lost!--and I have missed the chance to die
+with her or for her!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES
+
+
+However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer's
+grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it,
+loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon Dick with pullings and
+haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very
+stiffening rigor of despair.
+
+So, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in
+midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling
+fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian
+there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard's
+afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be
+denied.
+
+"Go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "I must go back.
+Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright.
+'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say."
+
+The Catawba grunted his disgust.
+
+"Captain Jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. What think? White squaw
+_yonder_--no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the
+direction of the stricken camp.
+
+Richard spun around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. "Then she
+is alive and safe?" he burst out. "Speak, friend, whilst I leave the
+breath in you to do it!"
+
+"Ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer's vehemence or
+by the dog-like shake. "What for Captain Jennif' think papoose thinks
+'bout the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw _firs'_; _then_
+blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif' and Captain
+Long-knife if can. Heap do firs' thing _firs'_, and las' thing _las'_.
+Wah!"
+
+It was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to
+make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us
+forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor
+lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for Dick;
+and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.
+
+So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in
+arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets
+spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage.
+And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, Dick
+was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a
+dead weight between us.
+
+'Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that
+rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the
+fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle
+preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking
+it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful
+Catawba.
+
+None the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and
+were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and
+we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their
+wire-like needles under foot.
+
+By this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but
+it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a
+nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very
+ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "Well, now; the Lord be
+praised! if here ain't the whole enduring--"
+
+What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For
+now my poor Dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I
+were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick
+little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady
+darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.
+
+"Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel,
+cruel!" Then she lashed out at us. "Why don't you strike a light? How
+can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"
+
+"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; "'tis only that the fever has
+overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the
+fire-scorching."
+
+"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."
+
+We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim
+found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel
+of a great king's musket--one of his reavings from the enemy--soon had a
+pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while
+she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples
+gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double
+rescue from the old hunter.
+
+Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me
+figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the
+Indian camp at our torture spectacle.
+
+Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come
+within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless
+back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when
+every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they
+set to work.
+
+With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams
+of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream;
+the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern
+edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the
+light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.
+
+The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected
+whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the
+looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it
+asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of
+the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a
+shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late
+jailers to the shelter of the wood.
+
+Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of
+temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the
+stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When
+he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran
+back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal
+from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.
+
+The outworking of the _coup de main_ was a triumph for the old
+borderer's shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the
+Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by
+the firing and the shrilling of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly
+into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder
+train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of Dick and me.
+
+Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had
+his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for,
+after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in
+rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had
+these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been
+lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the
+grass in a little glade; and with this mount for Margery and her
+tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.
+
+All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and
+oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that
+whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking
+note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them
+down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'Twas
+altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden
+that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how I
+did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.
+
+It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back
+upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates
+the pressing question of the moment.
+
+"As I take it, we may not linger here," I said. "Have you marked out a
+line of retreat?"
+
+The old borderer was busied with his loot of the Indian camp--'twas not
+in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been
+for time. In the raffle of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and
+warrior finery, he came upon my good old blade and Richard's great
+claymore--trophies claimed by the head men of the Cherokees after our
+taking, as we made no doubt.
+
+"Found 'em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the Great Bear,"
+said the hunter, and then with grim humor: "'Lowed to keep 'em to
+ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up
+in a fiery chariot, like the good old Elijah." The weapons disposed of,
+he made answer to my query. "Ez for making tracks immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner, I allow there ain't no two notions about that. But I'm
+dad-daddled if I know which-a-way to put out, Cap'n John, and that's the
+gospil fact."
+
+"Why not strike for the Great Trace, and so go back the way the powder
+convoy came?" I asked.
+
+It could be done, he said, but the hazard was great. 'Twas out of all
+reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to
+carry the news of the earthquake massacre. That news once cried abroad
+in the near-by Cowee Towns, the entire Tuckasege nation would turn out
+to run us down. Moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only
+practicable horse-path leading eastward.
+
+"Ez I'm telling you right now, Cap'n John, we made one more blunder in
+this here onfall of our'n, owin' to our having ne'er a seventh son of a
+seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead. Where we flashed in
+the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and Cap'n
+Dick got in. Ever' last one of 'em able to crawl is a-making straight
+for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do
+'em like the Gileadites did the men o' Ephraim at the passages o' the
+Jordan."
+
+Fresh as I was from the torture fire, I could not forbear a shudder at
+this old man's savagery.
+
+"Kill them in cold blood?" I would say.
+
+"Anan?" he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and I let the
+matter rest. He was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is
+concerned.
+
+But when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to
+the eastward flitting by way of the Great Trace. To the west and south
+there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white
+settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the Watauga. I
+asked if we might hope to reach this.
+
+"'Tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e'enabout the
+mountainousest patch o' land that ever laid out o' doors," was the
+hunter's reply. "And there ain't ne'er a deer-track, ez I knows on, to
+p'int the way."
+
+"Then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the
+Tuckaseges," said I.
+
+"Ez I reckon, that's about the long and short of it. And I do
+everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride
+skimper-scamper again, when she's been fair living a-horseback for a
+fortnight."
+
+"She will not fail you," I ventured to say, adding: "But Jennifer is in
+poor fettle for making speed."
+
+"It's ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he'll ride," quoth the old
+hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. "Reckon we can get him
+on a hoss right now."
+
+I went to see. Margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light I
+could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper
+distance.
+
+"Your patient, Mistress Margery,--We must mount and ride at once. Is he
+fit?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But we must be far to the eastward before daybreak."
+
+"I can not help it. If you make him ride to-night you will finish what
+those cruel savages began, Captain Ireton."
+
+"We have little choice--none, I should say."
+
+"Oh, you are bitter hard!" she cried, though wherein my offending lay
+just then I was wholly at a loss to know.
+
+"'Tis your privilege to say so," I rejoined. "But as for making Dick
+ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. We are only a little way
+from the nearest Indian towns, and if the daylight find us here--"
+
+"Spare me," she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked
+Ephraim Yeates to put her in her saddle.
+
+Richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my
+urging and let us set him upon his beast. Once safe in the saddle, we
+lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back
+to hold him erect. This last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas
+most ingenious. The forked limb, in shape like a Y, was set astride the
+cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to Dick's legs and to the
+girths. Thus the upright stem of the inverted Y became an easy back-rest
+for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was
+little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.
+
+When all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain
+top; and now even the old borderer and the Indian confessed their
+inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they
+knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight,
+and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.
+
+This route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we
+must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy
+camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the
+vengeance-cry. But here again there was no alternative, and we set us in
+order for the descent, with Yeates and the Catawba ahead, the women and
+Dick in the midst, and her Apostolic Majesty's late captain of hussars,
+masquerading as a British trooper, to bring on the rear.
+
+Once in motion beneath the blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly
+lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a
+short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head
+of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a
+thickset grove of the pines, and Ephraim Yeates appeared at my stirrup
+to say:
+
+"H'ist ye off your nag, Cap'n John, and let's take a far'well squinch at
+the inimy whilst we can."
+
+"Where? what enemy?" I would ask, slipping from the saddle at his word.
+
+"Why, the hoss-captain's varmints, to be sure; or what-all the
+abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. We ain't more than a cat's
+jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on 'em this
+morning."
+
+I saw not what was to be gained by any such long-range espial in the
+darkness. None the less, I followed the old man to the cliff's edge. He
+was wiser in his forecastings than I was in mine. There was a thing to
+look at, and light enough to see it by. One of the missile stones, it
+seems, had crashed into the great fire, scattering the brands in all
+directions. The pine-bough troop shelters were ablaze, and creeping
+serpents of fire were worming their way hither and yon over the year-old
+leaf beds in the wood. Ever and anon some pine sapling in the path of
+these fiery serpents would go up in a torch-like flare; and so, as I
+say, there was light enough.
+
+What we looked down upon was not inaptly pictured out by Ephraim
+Yeates's Scripture phrase, the abomination of desolation. Every vestige
+of the camp save the glowing skeletons of the troop shelters had
+disappeared, and the swarded savanna was become a blackened chaos-blot
+on the fair woodland scene. I have said that the powder-sheltering
+boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had
+toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a
+wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast
+upon the camp.
+
+At first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space. But a moment
+later, when three or four of the sapling torches blazed up together, we
+made out some half dozen figures of human beings--whether red or white
+we could not tell--stumbling and reeling about among the rocks like
+blind men drunken.
+
+At sight of these the old hunter doffed his cap and fell upon his knees
+with hands uplifted to pour out his zealot's soul in the awful sentences
+of the Psalmist's imprecation.
+
+"'Let God arise, and let His inimies be scattered; let them also that
+hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou
+drive them away; and like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the
+ungodly perish at the presence of God....'"
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH
+
+
+It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into
+the Great Trace near the ambush ground where we had set our trap for the
+peace men.
+
+The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were
+burning like points of white fire in the black dome of the heavens. As
+often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in
+fullest tide; and a whip-will's-widow, disturbed by our approach,
+fluttered to a higher perch and set up his plaintive protest.
+
+At our turning eastward on the trace, the old hunter massed our little
+company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to
+follow cautiously, tossed his bridle rein to the Catawba and went on
+ahead to feel out the way.
+
+This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the
+first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred
+we were together and measurably alone.
+
+Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding
+bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But,
+womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.
+
+"Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?" she said, bitterly; and
+then: "How you must despise me!"
+
+I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I
+begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing
+the outlet of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my
+tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the
+command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back
+smartly.
+
+"You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I
+speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise
+you!"
+
+"Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!" I protested. "'Tis my
+misfortune to be ever blundering."
+
+But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of
+heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again
+throughout the passage perilous.
+
+By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting
+any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old
+borderer awaiting us.
+
+"Ez I allow, we've smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole
+bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," he said, mixing metaphor,
+Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont. Then he put a leg
+over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: "From now on, old Jehu, the
+son o' Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind,
+Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your
+sword-p'int."
+
+Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the
+valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed
+after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses
+pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace
+was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur,
+pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in
+the blind race.
+
+I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long
+night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The
+over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and
+the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road.
+Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to
+thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its
+fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky
+ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the
+opener forest of the hill country.
+
+The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of
+a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was
+toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba
+or the Broad.
+
+"'Tis the Broad itself," said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking;
+"and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one
+the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch
+Broad."
+
+"But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright," said I.
+
+"So it do, so it do--in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for
+Sunday, by spells."
+
+"If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege
+country, as I take it."
+
+"Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I
+reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little
+gal?" this last to Margery.
+
+Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her
+grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.
+
+"I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for
+me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so."
+
+"Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be
+till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to
+give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o' sleep immejitly, _if_ not
+sooner, now."
+
+So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and
+when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the
+horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came
+to help me ease Dick down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no
+more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever
+delirium had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb
+contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.
+
+"How did we come out of it, Jack?" he asked, when we had let him feel
+the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.
+
+"As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself.
+You're the heaviest loser."
+
+He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who
+would not come anigh whilst I was with him.
+
+"That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the
+richest gainer."
+
+"What did you dream?"
+
+He beckoned me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and
+that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me."
+
+"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a
+bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for
+the breakfast cakes.
+
+'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all
+that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we
+ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and
+nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.
+
+At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log
+cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest.
+Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the
+journey paused.
+
+We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with
+stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood.
+Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting
+about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the
+settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,--of its own accord,
+or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,--and at the end of
+the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the
+forked stick to hold him in the saddle.
+
+After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than
+that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's
+rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day
+will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather
+to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind,
+or of the Catawba's.
+
+You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the
+wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the
+pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled
+the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from
+slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.
+
+But when the strain was off and Dick was up and fit again, the misery
+of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting
+sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her
+loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble of his love for her
+in his feverish vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a
+thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow
+of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her
+word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud
+for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for
+aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her
+notice.
+
+And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard
+Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all
+the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he
+was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward
+faring.
+
+As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me
+sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave it
+out in solitude, cursing the day that I was born, and that other more
+misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impassable between these
+two.
+
+What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great
+war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an
+honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you
+choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now
+gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was beyond
+forgiveness.
+
+'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach
+Queensborough by evening, that my deliverance came. I say deliverance
+because at the moment it had the look of a short shrift and a ready
+halter.
+
+We had crossed our own Catawba and were putting our horses at the steep
+bank on the outcoming side, when my saddle slipped. Dismounting to
+tighten the girth, I called to the others to press on, saying I should
+overtake them shortly.
+
+The promise was never kept. I scarce had my head under the saddle flap
+before a couple of stout knaves in homespun, appearing from I know not
+where, had me fast gripped by the arms, whilst a third made sure of the
+horse.
+
+"A despatch rider," said the bigger of the two who pinioned me. "Search
+him, Martin, lad, whilst I hold him; then we'll pay him out for
+Tarleton's hanging of poor Sandy M'Guire."
+
+I held my peace and let them search, taking the threat for a bit of
+soldier bullyragging meant to keep me quiet. But when they had turned
+the pockets of my borrowed coat inside out and ripped the lining and
+made it otherwise as much the worse for their mishandling as it was for
+wear, the third man fetched a rope.
+
+"Did you mean that, friend?--about the hanging?" I asked, wondering if
+this should be my loophole of escape from the life grown hateful.
+
+"Sure enough," said the big man, coolly. "You'd best be saying your
+prayers."
+
+I laughed. "Were you wearing my coat and I yours, you might hang me and
+welcome; in truth, you may as it is. Which tree will you have me at?"
+
+The man stared at me as at one demented. Then he burst out in a guffaw.
+"Damme, if you bean't a cool plucked one! I've a mind to take you to the
+colonel."
+
+"Don't do it, my friend. Though I am something loath to be snuffed out
+by the men of my own side, we need not haggle over the niceties. Point
+out your tree."
+
+"No, by God! you're too willing. What's at the back of all this?"
+
+"Nothing, save a decent reluctance to spoil your sport. Have at it, man,
+and let's be done with it."
+
+"Not if you beg me on your knees. You'll go to the colonel, I say, and
+he may hang you if he sees fit. You must be a most damnable villain to
+want to die by the first rope you lay eyes on."
+
+"That is as it may be. Who is your colonel?"
+
+"Nay, rather, who are you?"
+
+I gave my name and circumstance and was loosed of the hand-grip, though
+the third man dropped the cord and stepped back to hold me covered with
+his rifle.
+
+"An Ireton, you say? Not little Jock, surely!"
+
+"No, big Jock; big enough to lay you on your back, though you do have a
+hand as thick as a ham."
+
+He ignored the challenge and stuck to his text. "I never thought to see
+the son of old Mad-bull Roger wearing a red coat," he said.
+
+"That is nothing. Many as good a Whig as I am has been forced to wear a
+red coat ere this, or go barebacked. But why don't you knot the halter?
+In common justice you should either hang me or feed me. 'Tis hard upon
+noon, and I breakfasted early."
+
+"Fall in!" said the big man; and so I was marched quickly aside from the
+road and into the denser thicketing of the wood. Here my captors
+blindfolded me, and after spinning me around to make me lose the compass
+points, hurried me away to their encampment which was inland from the
+stream, though not far, for I could still hear the distance-minished
+splashing of the water.
+
+When the kerchief was pulled from my eyes I was standing in the midst of
+a mounted riflemen's halt-camp, face to face with a young officer
+wearing the uniform of the colonelcy in the North Carolina home troops.
+He was a handsome young fellow, with curling hair and trim side-whiskers
+to frame a face fine-lined and eager--the face of a gentleman well-born
+and well-bred.
+
+"Captain Ireton?" he said; by which I guessed that one of my capturers
+had run on ahead to make report.
+
+"The same," I replied.
+
+"And you are the son of Mr. Justice Roger Ireton, of Appleby Hundred?"
+
+"I have that honor."
+
+He gave me his hand most cordially.
+
+"You are very welcome, Captain; Davie is my name. I trust we may come to
+know each other better. You are in disguise, as I take it; do you bring
+news of the army?"
+
+"On the contrary, I am thirsting for news," I rejoined. "I and three
+others have but now returned from pursuing a British and Indian powder
+convoy into the mountains to the westward. We have been out five weeks
+and more."
+
+He looked at me curiously. "You and three others?" he queried. "Come
+apart and tell me about it whilst Pompey is broiling the venison. I
+scent a whole Iliad in that word of yours, Captain Ireton."
+
+"One thing first, if you please, Colonel Davie," I begged. "My
+companions are faring forward on the road to Queensborough. They know
+naught of my detention. Will you send a man to overtake them with a note
+from me?"
+
+The colonel indulged me in the most gentlemanly manner; and when my note
+to Jennifer was despatched we sat together at the roots of a great oak
+and I told him all that had befallen our little rescue party. He heard
+me through patiently, and when the tale was ended was good enough to say
+that I had earned a commission for my part in the affair. I laughed and
+promptly shifted that burden to Ephraim Yeates's shoulders.
+
+"The old hunter was our general, Colonel Davie. He did all of the
+planning and the greater part of the executing. But for him and the
+friendly Catawba, it would have gone hard with Jennifer and me."
+
+"I fear you are over-modest, Captain," was all the reply I got; and then
+my kindly host fell amuse. When he spoke again 'twas to give me a resume
+in brief of the military operations North and South.
+
+At the North, as his news ran, affairs remained as they had been, save
+that now the French king had sent an army to supplement the fleet, and
+Count Rochambeau and the allies were encamped on Rhode Island ready to
+take the field.
+
+In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that
+August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little
+changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first
+to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving
+to reassemble his scattered forces.
+
+A few military partizans, like my host, had kept the field, doing what
+the few might against the many to retard my Lord Cornwallis's northward
+march; and a week earlier the colonel with his handful of mounted
+riflemen had dared to oppose his entry into Charlotte.
+
+"'Twas no more than a hint to his Lordship that we were not afraid of
+him," said my doughty colonel. "You know the town, I take it?"
+
+"Very well, indeed."
+
+"Well, we had harassed him all the way from Blair's Mill, and 'twas
+midnight when we reached Charlotte. There we determined to make a stand
+and give him a taste of our mettle. We dismounted, took post behind the
+stone wall of the court house green and under cover of the fences along
+the road."
+
+"Good! an ambush," said I.
+
+"Hardly that, since they were looking to have resistance. Tarleton was
+sick, and Major Hanger commanded the British van. He charged, and we
+peppered them smartly. They tried it again, and this time their infantry
+outflanked us. We abandoned the court house and formed again in the
+eastern edge of the town; and now, bless you! 'twas my Lord Charles
+himself who had to ride forward and flout at his men for their want of
+enterprise."
+
+"But you could never hope to hold on against such odds!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, no; but we held them for a third charge, and beat them back, too.
+Then they brought up two more regiments and we mounted and got off in
+tolerably good order, losing only six men killed. But Colonel Francis
+Locke was one of these; and my brave Joe Graham was all but cut to
+pieces--a sore blow to us just now."
+
+The colonel sighed and a silence fell upon us. 'Twas I who broke it to
+say: "Then we are still playing a losing hand in the South, as I take
+it?"
+
+"'Tis worse than that. As the game stands we have played all our trumps
+and have not so much as a long suit left. Cornwallis will go on as he
+pleases and overrun the state, and the militia will never stand to front
+him again under Horatio Gates. Worse still, Ferguson is off to the
+westward, embodying the Tories by the hundred, and we shall have
+burnings and hangings and harryings to the king's taste."
+
+I nursed my knee a moment and then said: "What may one man do to help,
+Colonel Davie?"
+
+He looked up quickly. "Much, if you are that man, and you do not value
+your life too highly, Captain Ireton."
+
+"You may leave that out of the question," said I. "I shall count it the
+happiest moment of my life when I shall have done something worth their
+killing me for."
+
+Again he gave me that curious look I had noted before. Then he laughed.
+
+"If you were as young as Major Joe Graham, and had been well crossed in
+love, I could understand you better, Captain. But, jesting aside, there
+is a thing to do, and you are the man to do it. Our spies are thick in
+Cornwallis's camp, but what is needed is some master spirit who can plot
+as well as spy for us. Major Ferguson moves as Cornwallis pulls the
+strings. Could we know the major's instructions and designs, we might
+cut him off, bring the Tory uprising to the ground, and so hearten the
+country beyond measure. I say we might cut him off, though I know not
+where the men would come from to do it."
+
+"Well?" said I, when he paused.
+
+"The preliminary is some better information than our spies can give us.
+Now you have been an officer in the British service, and--"
+
+I smiled. "Truly; and I have the honor, if you please to call it so, of
+his Lordship's acquaintance. Also, I have that of Colonel Tarleton and
+the members of his staff, the same having tried and condemned me as a
+spy at Appleby Hundred some few weeks before this chase I have told you
+of."
+
+His face fell. "Then, of course, it is out of the question for you to
+show yourself in Cornwallis's headquarters."
+
+I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.
+
+"On the contrary, Colonel Davie, I am more than ever at your service.
+Let me have a cut of your venison and a feed for my horse, and I shall
+be at my Lord's headquarters as soon as the nag can carry me there."
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET
+
+
+"Tis a very pretty hazard, Captain Ireton. But can it be brought off
+successfully, think you?"
+
+"As I have said, it hangs somewhat upon the safety of my portmanteau. If
+that has come through unseized to Mr. Pettigrew at Charlotte, and I can
+lay hands on it, 'twill be half the battle."
+
+"You say you left it behind you at New Berne?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Carey was to forward it as he could."
+
+Colonel Davie had given me bite and sup, and I was ready to take the
+road. My plan, such as it was, had been determined upon, and to the
+furthering of it, the colonel had written me a letter to a friend in the
+town who might shelter me for a night and make the needed inquiry for my
+belongings. Also, he had given me another letter, of which more anon,
+and had pressed upon me a small purse of gold pieces--a treasure rare
+enough in patriot hands in that impoverished time.
+
+When all was done, two of my late captors were ordered to set me
+straight in the road; and some half-hour past noon I had shaken hands
+with the big fellow in homespun who had been so bent upon hanging me
+without benefit of clergy, had crossed the river, and was making the
+first looping in a detour which should bring me into Charlotte from the
+westward.
+
+'Twas drawing on toward evening, and I had recrossed the river a mile or
+more below Appleby Hundred, when I began to meet the outposts of the
+British army. I was promptly halted by the first of these; but my
+borrowed uniform and a ready word or two passed me within the lines as a
+courier riding post to headquarters from Major Ferguson in the west.
+
+The lieutenant in command of the first vedette line was not
+over-curious. He asked me a few questions about the major's plans and
+dispositions,--questions which, thanks to Colonel Davie's information, I
+was able to answer glibly enough, swallowed my tale whole, and was so
+obliging as to give me the password for the night to help me through the
+inner sentry lines.
+
+Thus fortified, I rode on boldly, and having the countersign the
+difficulties vanished. When I was come to town it was well past
+candle-lighting; and the patrol was out in force. But by dint of using
+the password freely I made my way unhindered to the house of the
+gentleman to whom Colonel Davie's letter accredited me.
+
+Here, however, the difficulties began. Though the camp of the army lay
+just without the town to the southward, the officers were quartered in
+every house, and that of Colonel Davie's friend was full to
+overflowing. What was to be done we knew not, but at the last moment my
+friend's friend thought of an expedient and wrote a note for me whilst I
+waited, half in hiding, in the outer hall.
+
+"'Tis a desperate chance, but these are desperate times," said my
+would-be helper. "I am sending you to the town house of one of our
+plantation seigneurs--a man who is fish, flesh or fowl, as his interest
+demands. I hear he came in to-day to take protection, and there is a
+chance that he will shelter you for the sake of your red coat and a gold
+piece or two. But I warn you, you must be what you appear to be--a
+soldier of the king--and not what this note of Colonel Davie's says you
+are."
+
+Seeing a wide field of danger-chances in this haphazarding, I would have
+asked more about this trimming gentleman to whom I was to be handed on;
+but at that moment there came a thundering at the door, and my anxious
+host was fain to hustle me out through the kitchen as he could, catching
+up a black boy on the way to be my guide.
+
+"God speed you," he said at parting. "Make your footing good for the
+night, if you can, and we'll see what can be done to-morrow. I'll send
+your portmanteau around in the morning, if so be Mr. Pettigrew has it."
+
+With that I was out in the night again, turning and doubling after my
+guide, who seemed to be greatly afeard lest I should come nigh enough to
+cast an evil eye upon him.
+
+'Twas but a little distance we had to go, and I had no word out of my
+black rascal till we reached the door-stone of a familiar mansion but
+one remove from the corner of the court house green. Here, with a
+stuttering "D-d-dis de house, Massa," he fled and left me to enter as I
+could.
+
+Since the street was busily astir with redcoat officers and men coming
+and going, and any squad of these might be the questioners to doubt my
+threadbare courier tale, I lost no time in running up the steps and
+hammering a peal with the heavy knocker. Through the side-lights I could
+see that the wide entrance hall was for the moment unoccupied; but at
+the knocker-lifting I had a flitting glimpse of some one--a little man
+all in sober black--coming down the stair. There was no immediate answer
+to my peal, but when I would have knocked again the door was swung back
+and I stepped quickly within to find myself face to face with--Margery.
+
+I know not which of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I
+do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me
+a low-dipped curtsy and gave me my greeting.
+
+"I bid you good evening, Captain Ireton," she said, coldly; and then
+with still more of the frost of unwelcome in her voice: "To what may we
+be indebted for this honor?"
+
+Now, chilling as these words were, they thrilled me to my finger-tips,
+for they were the first she had spoken to me since the night of my
+offending in the black gorge of the far-off western mountains. None the
+less, they were blankly unanswerable, and had the door been open I
+should doubtless have vanished as I had come. Of all the houses in the
+town this was surely the last I should have run to for refuge had I
+known the name of its master; and it was some upflashing of this thought
+that helped me find my tongue.
+
+"I never guessed this was your father's house," I stammered, bowing low
+to match her curtsy. "I beg you will pardon me, and let me go as I
+came."
+
+She laid a hand on the door-knob. "Is--is there any one here whom you
+would see?" she asked; and now her eyes did not meet mine, and I would
+think the chill had melted a little.
+
+"No. I was begging a night's lodging of a friend whose house is full. He
+sent me here with a note to--ah--to your father, as I suppose, though in
+his haste he did not mention the name."
+
+She held out her hand. "Give me the letter."
+
+"Nay," said I; "that would be but thankless work. Knowing me, your
+father must needs conceive it his duty to denounce me."
+
+"Give it me!" she insisted; this with an impatient little stamp of the
+foot and an upglance of the compelling eyes that would have constrained
+me to do a far foolisher thing, had she asked it.
+
+So I gave her the letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read
+it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved
+nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon
+her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom
+rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in
+her fair white neck. And with the seeing I became a fool of love again
+in very earnest, and was within a hair's breadth of sinking honor and
+all else in an outpouring of such words as a man may say once to one
+woman in all the world--and having said them may never unsay them.
+
+'Twas a most practical little thing she did that saved me from falling
+headlong into this last ditch of dishonor. Twisting the letter into a
+spill she stood on tiptoe to light it at one of the candles, saying:
+"'Twas a foolish thing to put on paper, and might well hang the writer
+in such times as these. He says you are a king's man and well known to
+him, and you are neither." But when the letter was a crisp of blackened
+paper-ash she turned upon me, and once again the changeful eyes were
+cold and her words were stranger-formal.
+
+"What is it you would have me do, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"Nothing," I made haste to say; "nothing save to believe that I came
+here unwittingly--and to let me go."
+
+"Where will you go? The town is alive with those who would--who would--"
+
+"Who would show me scant mercy, you would say. True; and yet I came
+hither--to the town, I mean--of my own free will."
+
+Her mood changed in the pivoting fraction of an instant, and now the
+beautiful eyes were alight and warm and pleadingly eloquent.
+
+"Oh, why did you come? Are you--are you what they said you were?"
+
+"A spy? If I am, you would scarce expect me to confess it, even to you."
+
+"'Tis dishonorable--most dishonorable!" she cried. "I could respect a
+brave soldier enemy; but a spy--"
+
+There was a clattering of hoofs in the street and a jingle of
+sword-scabbards on the door-stone. I wheeled to face the newcomers,
+determined now to front it boldly as a desperate man at bay. But before
+the fumbling hands without could find the door-knob Margery was beside
+me, all a-flutter in a trembling-fit of excitement.
+
+"Up the stair, quickly, _pour l'amour de Dieu!_" she whispered; and we
+were at the clock landing when the great door opened and some half-dozen
+king's officers came in. We crouched together behind the balustrade till
+they should pass beyond the sight of us, and in the group I marked a man
+stout and heavy built, walking full solidly for his two-and-forty years.
+He wore his own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for
+the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the
+candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed,
+long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and
+marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I
+had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on
+his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the
+field--Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses in the town to
+choose among, I had blundered into this--my Lord's own headquarters.
+
+I had but a passing glimpse of the incoming group, for when it was well
+beneath the turn of the stair, my lady had me up and running again,
+driving me on before her to the chamber floor above, along a dimly
+lighted corridor with many turnings, and so to a _cul-de-sac_ in the
+same--a doorless passage with a high dormer window in the end and no
+other apparent means of egress.
+
+Margery had snatched a candle from one of the corridor holders in the
+flight, and now she bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did
+it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to
+have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had
+turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot.
+
+Beyond the door lay a raftered garret half filled with cast-off house
+lumber and lighted and aired by two high roof windows. Into this she led
+me, with a finger on her lip for silence. A hum of voices, the clinking
+of glass, and now and again a hearty soldier laugh told me that my
+garret was above some living-room of the house.
+
+While I stood, boots in hand, she found a makeshift candlestick and in
+a trice had spread me a pallet on an ancient oaken settle big enough to
+serve for a choir stall in a cathedral.
+
+"You'll be safe here for the night, if so be you will make no more noise
+than a rat might make," she whispered. "_Mais, mon Dieu!_ 'tis a
+terrible risk. How you will get off in the morning I do not know."
+
+"Leave that to me," I rejoined. Then I remembered the portmanteau and
+the promise that it should be sent hither. Here was a further
+complication, and I must needs beg a boon of her. "A black boy will
+bring my portmanteau in the morning. I have a decent desire to be hanged
+in clean clothing; may I beg you to--"
+
+She made a quick little gesture of impatience; at the further
+complication, or at my boldness in asking, I knew not which. But her
+whispered reply was of assent, and then she turned to leave me.
+
+At that a sudden fierce desire to know why she had thus befriended me
+came to throttle prudence.
+
+"One more word before you go, Mistress Margery. Will you tell me why you
+have done this for the man who can serve you only by thrusting his neck
+into the hangman's noose?"
+
+She was silent for a little space, and I knew not what emotion it was
+that moved her to turn away and cover her face with her hands. But when
+she spoke her voice was low and tremulous with pent-up anger, as I
+thought.
+
+"Truly, Captain Ireton, you have done a thing to make me hate you--and
+myself, as well. But I may not forget my duty, sir."
+
+And with this cruel word she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+IN WHICH I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS
+
+
+You are not to suppose that the hazards of this hiding place in my Lord
+Cornwallis's headquarters would keep me from sleeping well and soundly.
+One of the things a soldier learns soonest is to take his rest when and
+as he can; and after peering curiously into the nooks and corners of my
+garret to make sure I was alone, I flung myself a-sprawl on the broad
+settle and was dropping off into forgetfulness when I heard a tapping at
+the wainscot.
+
+It fetched me wide awake with a start, and I was up and weaponed
+instantly--having taken the precaution to lay my sword in easy reach
+before blowing out the candle. Groping my way cautiously to the secret
+door, I crouched and listened. All was silent save for the intermittent
+clamor of the wassailers in the room beneath. After waiting a full
+minute I opened the door and looked without. The high dormer window in
+the end of the corridor made the darkness something less than visible,
+and I could see that the passage was empty. But on the floor at my feet
+was my supper; a roasted fowl on a server, hot from the spit, with
+maize bread and garnishings fit for an epicure.
+
+Since, as an appanage of Appleby Hundred, this was mine own house, and,
+by consequence, the fowl was mine, I ate as a hungry man should, making
+no scruple on the score of pride. Nor did I forget to be grateful to my
+lady; though when I remembered that this was doubtless but another leaf
+out of her duty-book, the meat was like to choke me. And it was this
+thought that made me resolve thrice over to loose her from the onerous
+burden of me so soon as ever the morning light should come to help me
+find the way out of my covert prison.
+
+None the less, for all my fine resolves to be astir and off by daybreak,
+the sun was shining broadly in at my garret window when I awoke.
+
+Seeing the sun, I tumbled out of my settle-bed, with a malediction on
+the sloth that had bound me so fast, and made for the door. But some one
+had been before me, entering whilst I slept. On a broken chair were a
+basin and ewer, with soap and towels; beside the chair was my
+portmanteau; and on a deal box, neatly covered with a linen cloth, was
+my breakfast.
+
+You, my dears, who have your maid or man to tell you when your bath is
+ready, and to lay out the fresh, clean garments sweet from the
+laundering, may wonder that I put away the thought of flight and let the
+breakfast cool whilst I shaved and washed and scrubbed, and doffed the
+vagabond and donned the gentleman. I did it; did it leisurely, rolling
+the privilege as a sweet morsel under my tongue. They say the raiment
+never makes the man; 'tis a half-truth only. For in his own regard, at
+least, the man is vagabond or gentleman as he may dress the one part or
+the other. And I am sure of this; that when I drew up another of the
+cast-off chairs to sit at meat, freshly groomed, and clad in the field
+uniform of a captain of her Apostolic Majesty's Hussars, I was the
+fitter by many transmigrations to cope with fate or any other adversary.
+
+And now, the claims of decency paid in full, and the keen edge of hunger
+somewhat dulled, I was free to think of my sweet lady's loving-kindness
+to one she hated--and to wonder what she would do and be for one she
+loved. As you would guess, there were dregs of bitterness in that cup;
+and I was once again set sharp upon relieving her of the burden of me.
+
+Having my Austrian uniform, I was now ready to move in that venture
+outlined in part to Colonel Davie; but to set my plan in action I must
+first get free of the house unseen by my Lord or any of his suite. How
+to do this unaided I could not determine; and, since any fresh
+blundering would surely breed new trouble for Margery, I was forced to
+wait for her return.
+
+I made sure she would come, if only to be the sooner quit of me; and so
+she did, tapping at the wainscot door whilst I was dallying with the
+breakfast leavings. 'Twas worth something to see her start of surprise
+when I opened to her; but she was far too true a lady to be one thing
+to the unwashed vagabond and another to the gentleman-clad.
+
+I gave her good morning, and was beginning in some formal fashion to
+thank her for her thoughtful care, when she cut me short.
+
+"'Tis my bounden duty, sir," she said, twanging once again upon that
+frayed string. "You are my guest and my--husband; though God knows I
+would you were neither."
+
+"_Merci, Madame_," said I; stung so sharply that the retort would out in
+spite of everything. "As once before, I am your poor misfortunate
+pensioner; but this time you are not less willing to give than I am to
+receive."
+
+She gave me a look that I could not fathom, and for a flitting instant I
+could have sworn there was a mocking smile a-lurk at the back of the
+beautiful eyes. Then she went straight to the subject-matter of her
+errand, brushing aside the small passage at arms as if it had not been.
+
+"You are in a most perilous situation, Captain Ireton; do you know it?
+News of your presence in Charlotte has got abroad, and at this very
+moment Tarleton's dragoons are making a house-to-house search for you."
+
+"So; some one has betrayed me?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Do you know who it was?"
+
+She nodded again.
+
+I considered of it for a little time, and then said: "I must not be
+taken here. Will your--ah--_duty_ stretch the length of showing me an
+unwatched door?"
+
+"There are no doors unwatched. You must stay here till nightfall."
+
+"Nay, that I will not. Will you tell me who it was set them on?"
+
+"'Twas a man you hate--and who hates you heartily in return. He saw you
+come here last night; he knows you are here now--or guesses it."
+
+I had no right to pry into her confidence as a thief would break into a
+house. But I was loath to fight my battle in the dark if she, or any
+one, could give me light.
+
+"His name, if you may give it, Mistress Margery. It may point the way
+out of this coil."
+
+"'Tis Owen Pengarvin. He was here last night when you came."
+
+Now I remembered the little man in black whom I had seen coming down the
+stair whilst I knocked at the door. But this left me in a greater maze
+than ever.
+
+"If he knows I am here, why does he let them search elsewhere?"
+
+At this she looked away from me, and I made sure I saw the sweet chin
+quiver when she spoke.
+
+"He has reasons of his own; reasons of--of--" but instead of telling me
+what they were she broke off to say: "But now you know why all the doors
+of this house are under guard."
+
+"Truly," said I; and therewith I fell to pacing up and down the narrow
+clear-way in the garret, striving to see how I might come off with
+nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.
+
+'Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me.
+Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing,
+the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion
+was nipped in the bud. I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made
+to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation
+whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.
+
+When that leaven began to work in me I was fit for the daringest thing
+that offered; so I paused to ask if my Lord Cornwallis were yet in the
+house.
+
+"He is writing letters in his bed-room," was her answer.
+
+"If you will show me the way thither I shall be your poor debtor by that
+much more."
+
+"I will not--unless you first tell me what you mean to do." She said it
+firmly, but now I was fronting death and could be as firm as she.
+
+"If you will not show me the way, I shall find it for myself." So much I
+said; but as for telling her that I meant to save his Lordship and all
+the others the trouble of running me down, I could not do that.
+
+"You are going to give yourself up," she said; and when I would not deny
+it, she darted before me and set her back against the wainscot door.
+"'Tis folly, folly!" she cried. "He would but pull the bell-cord and--"
+
+"And give the order that Colonel Tarleton's sentence be executed upon
+me, you would say. Be it so. But in that event I can at least clear you
+and your father of any complicity in my hiding."
+
+"I say you shall not go!"
+
+What touch of savagery is it in a man that will not suffer him to let a
+woman, loved or unloved, stand in the last resort against his will? At
+any other time I would have pleaded with her; would have ended, mayhap,
+by weakly deferring to her wish. But now--well, you must remember, my
+dears, that I was the trapped rat. I took her gently in my arms, set her
+aside, and stepped out into the corridor.
+
+I looked for nothing less than a volcano-burst of righteous indignation
+to pay me out for this piece of tyranny. But now, as twice or thrice
+before, my lady showed me how little a man may know of a woman's moods.
+
+"You need not be so masterful rough with me," she said, with a pouting
+of the sweet lips that set me back upon that thought of a wayward child
+wanting to be kissed. "If you say I must, I am in duty bound to show you
+the way." And so she led on and I followed, in a deeper maze than any
+she had ever set me in.
+
+Arrived at a pair of doors in the main passage, she showed me the one
+that opened to my Lord's bed-chamber and ran away; ran with her hands to
+her face as if to shut out a sight which would not bear looking upon.
+
+I turned my back stiffly upon this newer wonder, pulled myself together
+and rapped on the door. A voice within bade me enter; the door opened
+under my hand and I stood in the presence of the man who, as I made no
+doubt, would shortly summon his guards and have me out to my rope and
+tree.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+HOW I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN
+
+
+The room in which I found myself was the guest-chamber, furnished
+luxuriously, for that day and place, in French-fashioned mahogany and
+gilt. The bed was high and richly canopied, as befitted a peer's resting
+place; there was a square of Turkish drugget on the floor, a cheerful
+fire burning in the chimney arch, and on the small table whereat the
+occupant of the guest-room had lately breakfasted, a goodly display of
+the Ireton silver.
+
+My Lord was busy at his writing-desk when I entered; but when he looked
+up I saw the light of instant recognition in his eye. Never, I think,
+did another prisoner at the bar strive harder to read his sentence in
+his judge's eyes than I did in that moment of suspense. I liked not much
+the look he gave me; but his greeting was affable and kindly enough.
+
+"Ah, Captain Ireton; 'tis you, is it? We are well met, at last. They
+told me you were gone to join the rebels, did they not?"
+
+Here was an opening for a bold man, and in a flash I came to the
+right-about, choked down the defiance I had meant to hurl at him, and
+took quick counsel of cool audacity.
+
+"Indeed, my Lord, I know not what they have told you. In times past, the
+king had no truer soldier than I; and when I came across seas 'twas not
+to fight against him. But that I have not joined the rebels is no fault
+of certain of your Lordship's officers."
+
+"Say you so? But how is this? Surely I am not mistaken. I could be
+certain Colonel Tarleton reported your taking as a spy, and his trying
+of you. And was there not something about a rescue at the last moment by
+a band of these border bravos? But stay; let us have the colonel's story
+at first hands. Have the goodness to ring the bell for me, will you,
+Captain?"
+
+The crisis was come. A pull at the bell-cord would summon the guard, and
+the guard would be sent after Colonel Tarleton. Well, said the demon
+Despair, 'tis time you were gone to make room for Richard Jennifer; and
+I laid a hand upon the tasseled rope. But when I would have rung, all
+the man-pride, of race and of soldier training, rose up to bid me fight
+for space to strike one good blow in freedom's cause by way of
+leave-taking.
+
+So, as it had been an afterthought, I said: "A word further with you
+first, my Lord, and then, if you please, I will call the guard. All you
+remember is true, save as to the principal fact. So far from being a spy
+in intent, or even a partizan of either side, I was at the time but
+newly come into the province, knowing little of the cause of quarrel and
+caring still less. But Captain Falconnet and Colonel Tarleton did their
+earnest best to make a rebel of me out of hand."
+
+"Ah? But the proof of all this, Captain Ireton."
+
+"The best I can offer is the present fact of my coming to place myself
+at your Lordship's disposal, being moved thereto by your Lordship's own
+desire expressed in an order sent some weeks since to Sir Francis
+Falconnet."
+
+"So?--then you knew of that order?"
+
+"Captain Falconnet showed it to me after I was condemned and the firing
+squad was drawn up to snuff me out."
+
+My Lord Charles gave me the courtier smile that so endeared him to his
+soldiers,--he was well-loved of his men,--and bade me sit.
+
+"The plot thickens, as Mr. Richardson would say. Let me have your story,
+Captain Ireton. I would rejoice to know why Captain Sir Francis
+Falconnet saw fit to disobey his orders."
+
+I was clear of the lee shore and the breakers at last, but I was fain to
+believe that not Machiavelli himself could hope to weather the storm in
+the open. How much or how little did Lord Cornwallis remember of Colonel
+Tarleton's report? How explicit had that report been?--was there any
+mention in it of my eavesdropping at the conference between Captain John
+Stuart and the baronet; of my attempt to warn the over-mountain men
+against the Indian-arming? Could I hope to tell his Lordship a tale so
+near the truth as to be unassailable by Tarleton and his officers, by
+Gilbert Stair and the spiteful little pettifogger, and yet so deftly
+garbled as to keep my neck out of the halter for the time being?
+
+All these questions thronged upon me as a mob to pull cool reason from
+her seat, and I could only play the part of the trapped rat and snap
+back at them. Yet my Lord Cornwallis was waiting for his answer, and a
+single moment's hesitation might breed suspicion.
+
+You must forgive me, my dears, if I confess it beyond me to set down
+here in measured words the tale I told his Lordship. A lie is a lie, be
+it told in never so good a cause; a thing deplorable and not to be
+glozed over or boasted of after the fact. So I beg you to let these
+quibblings to which I was driven rest in oblivion, figuring to
+yourselves that I used all the truth I dared, and that I strove through
+it all not wholly to sink the gentleman and the man of honor in the spy.
+
+'Twas but a bridge of glass when all was said; a bridge that carried me
+safely over for the moment into my Lord's confidence, yet one which a
+pebble flung by any one of a dozen hands might shiver in the dropping of
+an eyelid.
+
+"Truly, you have had a most romantic experience," said his Lordship,
+when I had made an end. Then he lay back in his chair and laughed till
+the stout body of him shook again. "And all about a little wench of the
+provincials. Well, well; Sir Francis was always a sad dog with the
+women. But all this was in the early summer, you say; where have you
+been since?"
+
+Here was a chance for more romancing, this time of a sort less
+dangerous. So I drew breath and plunged again, telling how I had been
+carried off by my captor-rescuers; how I had fallen into the hands of
+the Indians--not all of whom, I would remind his Lordship, were friendly
+to the king; and lastly how I had but lately escaped from the mountain
+fastnesses back of Major Ferguson's camp at Gilbert Town. At this point
+my Lord interrupted the tale-telling.
+
+"So you know of the major and his doings? I would you had brought me
+late news of him. 'Tis a week since his last courier reached us."
+
+This was the moment for the playing of my trump card--the only one I
+held. I rose, bowed, took from my pocket that other letter given me by
+Colonel Davie and handed it to his Lordship. 'Twas Major Ferguson's last
+report, intercepted by one of Davie's vigilant scouting parties.
+
+"Ah!" said my Lord; and I strolled to the window whilst he read the
+letter.
+
+When I turned to front him again he was all affability; and I knew I was
+safe--for the time, at least.
+
+"The major commends you highly as a good man and a true, Captain
+Ireton," he said, and truly the letter did contain a warm-hearted
+commendation of "the bearer," whose name, for safety's sake, was
+omitted; and not only this, but the writer desired to have his man back
+again. Then my Lord added: "You are here to take your old service again,
+I assume?"
+
+I hesitated. There be things that even a spy may balk at; and the taking
+of the oath of allegiance to the other side I conceived to be one of
+them. So I said:
+
+"I have worn many uniforms since I doffed that of King George, my Lord,
+and--"
+
+He laughed cheerily. "'But me no buts,' Captain Ireton; once an
+Englishman, always an Englishman, you know. I shall assign you to duty
+in my own family."
+
+At this I made a bold stroke. "Let it be then as an officer of her
+Apostolic Majesty's service, and your Lordship's guest for the time.
+Believe me, it is thus I may best serve your--ah--the cause."
+
+"As how?" he would ask.
+
+I smiled and touched the braided jacket of my hussar uniform.
+
+"As an Austrian officer on a tour of observation in the campaign I may
+go and come where others may not, and see and hear things which your
+Lordship may wish to know. Does your Lordship take me?"
+
+He laughed and rose and clapped me on the shoulder.
+
+"You may call the guard now, Captain, and I will turn you over--not to a
+firing squad, but to the tender mercies of our old rascal host who is a
+'trimmer' of the devil's own school. If he tries to screw a penny's pay
+out of you, as he is like to, put him in arrest."
+
+"It is your Lordship's meaning that I should be quartered here?--in this
+house?" I gasped.
+
+"And why not? Ah, my good Captain of Hussars, I have made you my
+honorary aide-de-camp and a member of my family so that I may keep an
+eye on you. _Comprenez-vous?_"
+
+He said it with a laugh and another hearty hand-clap on my shoulder, and
+I would fain take it for a jest. Yet there be playful gibes that hint at
+gibbets; and I may confess to you here, my dears, that I left my Lord's
+presence with the conviction that my acquittal was but a reprieve
+conditioned upon the best of future good behavior. So it took another
+turn of the audacity screw to tune me up for the battle royal with
+Gilbert Stair and the pettifogger, Owen Pengarvin.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+IN WHICH I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE
+
+
+With the house guard for a guide I found my host in a box-like den below
+stairs; a room with a writing-table, two chairs and a great iron
+strong-box for its scanty furnishings.
+
+The old man was sitting at the table when I looked in, his long nose
+buried in a musty parchment deed. The light from the single small window
+was none too good, but it sufficed to help him recognize me at a glance,
+despite the hussar uniform. In a twinkling he put the breadth of the
+oaken table between us, hurled the parchment deed into the open
+strong-box, slammed to the cover and gave a shrill alarm.
+
+"Ho! you devils without, there! Here he is--I have him! Help! Murder!"
+
+The guard, a burly, bearded Darmstaedter, turned on his heel and stood at
+attention in the doorway, looking stolidly for his orders, not to the
+shrilling master of the house, but to the man who wore a uniform.
+
+"'Tis naught," I said, speaking in German. "He mistakes me for a
+_rittmeister_ of the rebels. _Verstehen Sie?_"
+
+The soldier saluted, wheeled and vanished; and I sat down to wait till
+the old man's outcry should pause for lack of breath. When my chance
+came, I said:
+
+"Calm yourself, Mr. Stair. You are in no present danger greater than
+that which you may bring upon yourself. Blot out all the past, if you
+please, and consider me now as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family seeking quarters in your house by my Lord's express command."
+
+"Quarters in my house?--ye're a damned rebel spy!" he cried. "I'll
+denounce ye to my Lord for what ye are. Ho! ye rascals, I say!"
+
+"Peace!" I commanded, sternly; "this is but child's folly. No man in the
+British army would arrest me at your behest. Ring the bell and summon
+your factor lawyer. I would have a word or two in private with both of
+you."
+
+He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great
+beads on his wrinkled forehead.
+
+"D' ye--d' ye mean to kill us both?" he gasped.
+
+"Not if I can help it. But some better understanding is needful, and we
+will have it here and now, once for all. Will you ring, or shall I?"
+
+He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him. A grinning
+black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond
+giving the order, I gave it myself.
+
+"Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly. Tell him Mr. Stair
+wants him."
+
+There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came. Being
+but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have
+fled when he saw me. But I caught him by the collar and sent him
+scurrying around the table to keep his master company.
+
+"Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at
+Appleby Hundred some weeks since?" I demanded. "Speak out, and quickly."
+
+'Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap
+blindly in despair.
+
+"You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you," he gritted
+out.
+
+"On your information?"
+
+"On mine and Mr. Stair's."
+
+"Ye lie!" shrieked the miser. "I tell't ye to keep hands off, ye
+bletherin' little deevil, ye!"
+
+"Never mind," said I; "what's done is done. But it must be undone, and
+that swiftly and thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the
+others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to
+contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some
+story that will hold water and lose no time about it. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Seeing he was not to be put to the wall and spitted on the spot, the
+lawyer recovered himself.
+
+"'Tis not the criminal at the bar who dictates terms, Captain Ireton,"
+he said, with his hateful smirk. "You are under sentence of death, and
+that by a court lawful enough in war time."
+
+"You refuse?" I said.
+
+He shrugged.
+
+"Speaking for myself, I shall leave no stone unturned to bring you to
+book, Captain,--when it suits my purpose."
+
+I was loath to go to extremities with either of them; but my bridge of
+glass must be defended at all hazards.
+
+"You would best reconsider, Mr. Pengarvin. At this present moment I am
+of my Lord Cornwallis's military family and I have his confidence. A
+word from me will put you both in arrest as persons whose loyalty in
+times past has been somewhat more than blown upon."
+
+"Bah!" said the pettifogger. "Bluster is a good dog, but Holdfast is the
+better. You can prove nothing, as you well know. Moreover, with your own
+neck in a noose you dare not mess and meddle with other men's affairs."
+
+"Dare not, you say? I'll tell you what I may dare, Master Attorney. If
+you are not disposed to meet me half way in this matter, I shall go to
+my Lord, tell him how I have been cheated out of my estate, declare the
+marriage with Mistress Margery, and see that you get your just deserts.
+And you may rest assured that this soldier-earl will right me, come what
+may."
+
+'Twas a bold stroke, the boldest of any I had made that morning; but I
+was wholly unprepared for its effect upon the lawyer. His rage was like
+that of some venomous little animal, a thing to make an onlooker shudder
+and draw back.
+
+"Never!" he hissed; "never, I say! I'll kill her first--I'll--" He
+choked in the very exuberance of his malignance, and his face was like
+the face of a man in a fit.
+
+'Twas then that I saw the pointing of his villainy and knew what Margery
+had meant when she said that for reasons of his own he was holding my
+betrayal in abeyance. He was Falconnet's successor and my rival. This
+little reptile aspired to be the master of my father's acres and the
+husband of my dear lady! And his holding off from denouncing me at once
+was also explained. Taking it for granted that the wife would bargain
+for the husband's life, he had made a whip of his leniency to flog
+Margery into subjection.
+
+My determination was taken upon the instant. There was no safety for
+Margery whilst this plotting pettifogger was at large, and I stepped to
+the door and called the sentry. The Darmstaedter came back and I pointed
+to the lawyer. Then, indeed, the furious little madman found his tongue
+and shrilled out his defiance.
+
+"Curse you!" he yelled. "I'll be quits with you for this, Master Spy!
+'Tis your hearing now, but mine will come, and you shall hang like a
+dog! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth--I'll--"
+
+I made a sign and the soldier brought his musket into play and pricked
+his prisoner with the bayonet in token that time pressed. So we were rid
+of the lawyer in bodily presence, though I could hear his snarlings and
+spittings as the big Darmstaedter ran him out at the bayonet's point.
+
+During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood
+apart, watchful but trembling. When we were alone I said:
+
+"Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your
+house, as a member of my Lord's family. Lead on, if you please, and I'll
+follow."
+
+He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad
+stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and
+catching at the balustrade to steady himself as we ascended. The room he
+gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and
+pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or
+a look behind him.
+
+The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in
+suddenly when I set my shoulder to it. There was a quick little cry,
+half of anger, half of affright, from within. I drew back hastily, with
+a muttered curse upon the old man's spite, and in the act my spur caught
+the door and slammed it shut behind me.
+
+For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had
+shown me to my lady's chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off,
+before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS
+
+
+If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my
+lady's flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood
+fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.
+Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like
+air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, "Fie, for shame, Captain
+Ireton!--and you would call yourself a gentleman!" to set me afire with
+prinklings of abashment.
+
+What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to
+let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own
+father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I
+should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run
+away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again,
+and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of
+passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the
+best of us.
+
+"How are you better than the man you warned me of?" she cried. And
+then, in a tempest of grief: "Oh! you would not leave me the respect I
+bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it
+under foot!"
+
+Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this
+unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for
+me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty,
+heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me
+spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded
+wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better
+right to look upon her thus?
+
+So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin
+veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid
+the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which
+lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked
+himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to
+look about him for his mate.
+
+Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may
+stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I
+would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to
+me.... Ah, God! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be
+ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I
+would do.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!" she pleaded. "Think
+what it will mean to you, and how you will loathe me and yourself as
+well when this madness is overpast! Oh, go; go quickly, lest I, too,
+forget--"
+
+And so it was that I found sudden strength to turn and leave her
+kneeling there; turned to grope blindly for the door with all the pains
+of hell aflame within me.
+
+For now I had put honor under foot; now I knew that I had truly earned
+her scorn and loathing. I could no longer plead that I was the puppet of
+fate flung against my will between this maiden and my dear lad. I was
+the wilful offender; false to my love, false to my friend, a recreant to
+every oath wherewith I had bound myself to be true and loyal to these
+two.
+
+With such a flaming sword to drive me forth, I stumbled from the room,
+thinking only how I should quickest rid me of myself. Hastening to my
+garret sleeping-place I buckled on my sword, found my shako, and went
+straight to my Lord's bed-chamber. My rap at the door went unanswered,
+and a broad-shouldered young fellow in a lieutenant's uniform, lounging
+on a settle in the clock landing of the stair, told me Lord Cornwallis
+was gone out.
+
+I was face to face with this young lieutenant before I recognized him;
+being so bent upon haste I should have passed him on the landing without
+a second glance had he not risen to grip me by the shoulders.
+
+"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "is it thus you pass an old friend
+without a word, Captain Ireton?"
+
+'Twas my good death-watch; that Lieutenant Tybee of the light-horse who
+had sunk the British officer in the man in that trying night at Appleby
+Hundred. I returned his hearty greeting as well as I might, and would
+have explained my present state and standing but that I was loath to lie
+to him. But as to this, he saved me the shame of it.
+
+"I could have sworn you were no rebel, Captain Ireton; indeed, I made
+bold to say as much to our colonel, after it was all over. I told him a
+soft word or two would have won you back to your old service. You see I
+knew better than the others what lay beneath all your madnesses that
+night."
+
+"You knew somewhat, but not all," I said; and thereupon, lest he should
+involve me deeper and detain me longer when I was athirst to be gone, I
+hastened to ask where I might hope to find his Lordship and Colonel
+Tarleton.
+
+"'Tis the hour for parade; you will find them at the camp," he replied.
+And then, out of the honest English heart of him: "Have you made your
+peace, Captain? Do you need a friend to go with you?"
+
+I said I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little
+while before; that by my Lord's appointment I was now a sort of honorary
+aide-de-camp.
+
+"Good!" said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince
+for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact. Then he
+roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below: "A mount
+for Captain Ireton--and be swift about it!"
+
+He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the
+talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty
+God-speed. Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor
+return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of
+nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest
+quench the fires of it.
+
+The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little
+changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the
+near-at-hand camp of an armed host. Being but a halt-point _en route_ in
+the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of
+that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.
+
+I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary's quarters and
+making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at
+the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy's use of them.
+Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the
+lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait
+my opportunity.
+
+The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the
+soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in
+many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled
+to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.
+
+At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's
+famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the
+infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October
+sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves
+of steel at the command to halt and port arms.
+
+What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this
+well-trained host, armed--as we were not--with the deadly bayonet, and
+moving as one man at the word of command? Not the bravest home guard or
+militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on
+the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.
+
+Riding presently around the field to be the nearer to the general when
+my time should come, I missed the mark completely. It so chanced that as
+the parade was ended my Lord and his suite were at the extreme right;
+and when the regiments broke ranks I was forced to skirt the entire camp
+to come into the road. By this time those I sought were gone into the
+town, so I must needs turn about and follow, with the thing I had to say
+still unspoken.
+
+I need not drag you back and forth with me on the search I made to find
+Lord Cornwallis again. 'Tis enough to say that after missing him here
+and there, I ran him to earth at the court house, where, it was told
+me, my Lord was sitting in council with his staff officers.
+
+Thinking it worse than useless to try to force my way into the council
+chamber, I waited in the raff of soldiery without, cursing the delay
+which gave my despairing resolution time to cool. When I had closed the
+door of my dear lady's chamber behind me I was resolved to fling myself
+upon that fate which needed but a word from me to make my calling and
+election to a gibbet swift and sure. Had I found my Lord Cornwallis in
+his bed-room the word would have been spoken; but now the iron of
+resolution cooled in spite of me.
+
+'Twas not that I was less willing to pay the price of expiation; that
+must be done in any case. But I had seen the enemy, and all the soldier
+in me rebelled at the thought of dying like a noosed bullock in the
+shambles. Could I but strike that one good blow.
+
+The old court house of our greater Mecklenburg was such as some of you
+may remember; a stout wooden building raised upon brick pillars to leave
+a story underneath. In the time of the British occupation this lower
+story served as a market house, and the public entrance to the court
+room above was reached by steps on the outside. In my boyhood days this
+outer stair was the only one; but now in wandering aimlessly through the
+market-place beneath I found another flight in a corner; the "jury
+stair," they called it, since it provided the means of egress from the
+jury box above.
+
+The sight of this inner stair set me plotting. Could I make use of it to
+come unseen into the council chamber of Lord Cornwallis and his
+officers?
+
+The market-place was well thronged with venders and soldier buyers; the
+patriotic Mecklenburgers were not averse to the turning of an honest
+penny upon the needs of their oppressors, as it seemed. I watched my
+chance, and when there were no prying eyes to mark it, made the dash up
+the steps.
+
+Happily for the success of the adventure there was an angle in the
+narrow stair to hide me whilst I lifted the trap door in the court-room
+floor a scant half-inch and got my bearings. As I had hoped, the trap
+opened behind the jury box, and I was able to raise it cautiously and so
+to draw myself up into the room above, unseen and unheard.
+
+A peep around the corner of the high jury stalls showed me my Lord and
+his suite gathered about the lawyers' table in front of the bar. Of the
+staff I recognized only Stedman, the commissary-general; Tarleton,
+looking something the worse for his late illness; Major Hanger, his
+second in command, and the young Irishman, Lord Rawdon.
+
+At the moment of my espial, Cornwallis was speaking, and I drew back to
+listen, well enough content to be in earshot. For if my good angel had
+timed my coming I could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.
+
+"What we have to consider now is how best to reach Ferguson with an
+express instantly," his Lordship was saying. "This rising of the
+over-mountain men is likely to prove a serious matter--not only for the
+major, but for the king's cause in the two provinces. Lacking positive
+orders to the contrary, Ferguson will fight--we all know that; and if he
+should be defeated 'twill hopelessly undo his work among the border
+loyalists and set us back another twelvemonth."
+
+"Then your Lordship will order him to come in with what he has?" said a
+voice which I knew for Colonel Tarleton's.
+
+"Instanter, had I a sure man to send."
+
+"Pshaw! I can find you a hundred amongst the late royalist recruits."
+'Twas young Lord Rawdon who said this.
+
+"Damn them!" said his Lordship shortly; "I would sooner trust this new
+aide of mine. He comes straight from the major and can find his way back
+again."
+
+Tarleton laughed. "I fear we shall never agree upon him, my Lord. I know
+not how he has made his peace with you, but I do assure you he is as
+great a rascal as ever went unhung. 'Tis true, as you say, I did not go
+into the particulars; but were Captain Stuart or Sir Francis Falconnet
+here, either of them would convince your Lordship in a twinkling."
+
+There was silence for a little space following the colonel's
+denunciation of me, and then my Lord broke it to say: "I may not be so
+credulous as you think, Colonel. Rebel spy or true-blue loyalist, he is
+safe enough for the present. In the meantime in this matter of reaching
+Ferguson we may make good use of him."
+
+"In what manner, your Lordship?" asked one whose voice I did not
+recognize.
+
+"He has come straight from Major Ferguson, as I say; and, loyalist or
+rebel, he can find his way back to Gilbert Town."
+
+"But you'll never be trusting him with despatches!" said Lord Rawdon.
+
+"There is no need to trust him. He can be given the despatches with some
+hint of their purport, and of how much the king's cause will profit by
+their safe delivery."
+
+Again a silence fell upon the group around the lawyers' table, and then
+some one--'twas Major Hanger, as I thought--said: "'Tis an unread riddle
+for me as yet, my Lord."
+
+Cornwallis laughed. "Where are your wits this morning, gentlemen? If he
+be loyal and true, the despatches will go safe enough. If, on the other
+hand, he be a rebel and a spy, he will doubtless tamper with them; but
+in that case he will none the less ride straight enough to Major
+Ferguson's headquarters in the West."
+
+"H'm; your Lordship is still too deep for me," said Tarleton's second in
+command. "If he be a rebel and a spy, why, in God's name, should he
+carry your Lordship's letters to any but some rag-tag colonel of his own
+kidney?"
+
+My Lord laughed again. "Truly, Major, you should go to a dame's school
+and learn diplomacy. If we tell him beforehand what our object is, how
+could any rebel of them all defeat it more surely than by going to
+Ferguson with a garbled message that would make him stand and fight a
+losing battle?"
+
+"But, my Lord--the risk!" cut in the commissary-general.
+
+"There need be none. An hour after he sets out we shall send a mounted
+detail after him with an Indian tracker to nose out his trail. The
+lieutenant in command will carry duplicate despatches. At the worst,
+Ireton will guide these followers to Ferguson's rendezvous; and, so far
+as we know, he is the only man who knows exactly where to find the
+major."
+
+I had heard enough. Under cover of the chorus of bravos raised by Lord
+Cornwallis's explication of his plot within a plot, I lifted the
+trap-door and made my exit as noiselessly as I had come.
+
+Guessing that no time would be lost in putting the plan into action, I
+made haste to be found inquiring hither and yon for the
+commander-in-chief when my Lord and his suite came down the outer stair;
+and when we were met I was quickly told of my assignment to courier
+duty.
+
+"Make your preparations to take the road within the hour, and report to
+me at Friend Stair's," said my Lord, most affably. "We shall put your
+new-found loyalty to the test, Captain Ireton, by entrusting you with a
+most important mission. Go with the commissary-general and he will find
+you your mount and equipment."
+
+Thus dismissed, I went with Stedman, and was accorded a more gentlemanly
+welcome than my overhearings had given me leave to expect.
+
+On the way to the horse paddock the commissary-general told me of his
+plan to write a history of the campaign; a bit of confidence which set
+me laughing inwardly and wondering if he would put one John Ireton,
+sometime of the Scots Blues, and late captain in her Apostolic Majesty's
+Hussars, between the covers of his book. 'Tis small wonder that he did
+not. I have since had the pleasure of reading his history of the great
+war, and I find it curiously lacking in those incidents which did not
+redound to the honor and glory of the king's cause and army in the
+field.
+
+Not to digress, however, my makeshift mount was soon exchanged for a
+better; I was allowed to draw what I would of accoutrements and
+provender from the king's stores; and so, to cut it short, I was
+presently at the door of my Lord's headquarters fully equipped and ready
+for the road.
+
+I did hope in those last few moments that I might have a chance to
+exchange a word with my dear lady; might ask her forgiveness, or,
+failing so much grace of her, might at least have another sight of her
+sweet face.
+
+But even this poor boon was denied me. I was scarce out of the saddle
+when an aide came to conduct me to the general, and I saw no one in the
+house save my Lord himself.
+
+As you would guess, my instructions conformed exactly to the plan
+outlined by Lord Cornwallis in the council. I was entrusted with a
+sealed packet for delivery to Major Ferguson, and, for safety's sake, as
+my Lord explained, I was given the meat of the message to deliver
+verbally should the need arise. Ferguson was to be ordered to come in
+instantly by forced marches, if necessary, and he was on no account to
+risk a battle with the over-mountain men.
+
+You may be sure, my dears, that I scarce drew breath till I was a-horse
+and out of the town and galloping hard on the road to that ford of
+Master Macgowan's which afterward became famous in our history under the
+misspelling "Cowan's Ford." 'Twas too good to be true that I should be
+thrust thus into the very gaping mouth of opportunity, and now and again
+I would feel the packet buttoned tight beneath my hussar jacket to make
+sure 'twas not a dream to vanish at a touch.
+
+In the mad joy of it the spirit of prophecy came upon me, and I saw as
+if the thing were done, how at last I held the fate of the patriot cause
+in all our west country in the hollow of my hand.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+OF WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK
+
+
+Skipping lightly over the happenings of the two days following my
+departure from Charlotte on the king's errand, I may say that after
+passing the British outposts at the crossing of the Catawba, I met
+neither friend nor foe; and from noon on I rode to the westward through
+a pitiless drizzling rain, splashed to the belt with the mire of the
+road, and having little chance to inquire my way.
+
+This last lack grew with the passing hours to the size of a threatening
+hazard. As you may have guessed, I knew no more than a blind man the
+route I should take; knew no more of the whereabouts of Gilbert Town and
+Major Ferguson's rendezvous than that both were some eighty miles to the
+westward.
+
+At the outset I had thought to feel out the way in general by cautious
+inquiry along the road; but when I came to consider of this, the risk of
+betraying my ignorance to those who followed me was too great to let me
+turn aside to any of the wayside houses; and as for chance passers-by,
+there were none--the rain kept all within doors.
+
+So I was constrained to gallop on without pause; and throughout that
+comfortless afternoon and the scarce less miserable day which followed,
+there were no incidents to break the dull monotony of the blind race
+save these two; that once the clouds lifted enough to give me a glimpse
+of my pursuers in a far reach to the eastward; and once again I had a
+sight of an awkward horseman in the road before me--saw him and tried to
+overtake him, and could not, for all his clumsy riding.
+
+Now I was curious about this lone horseman ahead for more reasons than
+one, but chiefly because my glimpse of him seemed to show me the back of
+a man whom I made sure I had left safe behind in the British guard-house
+in Charlotte, to wit: the scoundrelly little pettifogger.
+
+At first I scoffed at the idea. Saying he were free to leave Charlotte,
+how should he be riding post on my haphazard road to the westward? 'Twas
+against all reason, and yet the tittuping figure of which I had but a
+rain-veiled glimpse named itself Owen Pengarvin in spite of all the
+reasons I could bring to bear.
+
+'Twas close on eventide of the second day, the early evening gloaming of
+a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost
+in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would
+seem, from beneath the very hoofs of my horse.
+
+"God save the king!"
+
+The bay shied suddenly, standing with nostrils a-quiver; and I had to
+look closely to make out the little brown dot of humanity clad in russet
+homespun crouching in the path, its childish eyes wide with fear and its
+lips parted to shrill again: "God save the king!"
+
+I threw a stiff leg over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to
+my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the
+sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of
+the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not
+above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might
+have taken as a pattern for one of his seraphs.
+
+"What know you of the king, little one?" I asked.
+
+"Gran'dad told me," she lisped. "If I was to see a soldier-man I must
+say, quick, 'God save the king,' or 'haps he'd eat me. Is--is you
+hungry, Mister Soldier-man?"
+
+"Truly I am that, sweetheart; but I don't eat little maids. Where is
+your grandfather?"
+
+"Ain't got any gran'favver; I said 'gran'_dad_.'"
+
+"Well, your gran'dad, then; can you take me to him?"
+
+"I don't know. 'Haps you'd eat _him_."
+
+"No fear of that, my dear. Do I look as if I ate people?"
+
+She gave me a long scrutiny out of the innocent eyes and then put up two
+little brown hands to be taken. "I tired" she said; and my sore heart
+went warm within me when I took her in my arms and cuddled her. After a
+long-drawn sigh of contentment, she said: "My name Polly; what's yours?"
+
+"You may call me Jack, if you please--Captain Jack, if that comes the
+easier. And now will you let me take you to your gran'dad?"
+
+She nodded, and I spoke to the bay and mounted, still holding her
+closely in my arms.
+
+"Tell me quickly which way to go, Polly," I said; for besides being, as
+I would fear, far out of the way to Gilbert Town, the last hilltop to
+the rear had given me another sight of my shadowing pursuers riding hard
+as if they meant to overtake me.
+
+The little maid sat up straight on the saddle horn and looked about her
+as if to get her bearings.
+
+"That way," she said, pointing short to the right; and I wheeled the
+horse into a blind path that wound in and out among the trees for a long
+half mile, to end at a little clearing on the banks of a small stream.
+
+In the midst of the clearing was a rude log cabin; and in the open
+doorway stood a man bent and aged, a patriarchal figure with white hair
+falling to his shoulders and a snowy beard such as Aaron might have
+worn. At sight of me the old watcher disappeared within the house, but a
+moment later he was out again, fingering the lock of an ancient
+Queen's-arm.
+
+I drew rein quickly, and the little maid sat up and saw the musket.
+
+"Don't shoot, gran'dad!" she cried. "He's Cappy Jack, and he doesn't
+eat folkses."
+
+At this the old man came to meet us, though still with the clumsy musket
+held at the ready.
+
+"These be parlous times, sir," he said, half in apology, I thought. And
+then: "You have made friends with my little maid, and I owe you somewhat
+for bringing her safe home."
+
+"Nay," said I; "the debt is mine, inasmuch as I have the little one for
+my friend. 'Tis long since I have held a trusting child in my arms, I do
+assure you, sir."
+
+He bowed as grandly as any courtier. "I hope her trust is not misplaced,
+sir; though for the matter of that, we have little enough now to take or
+leave."
+
+"You have given it all to the king?" said I, feeling my way as I had
+need to.
+
+His eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly.
+
+"The king has taken all, sir, as you see," this with a wave of the hand
+to point me to the forlorn homestead. "There is naught left me save this
+poor hut and my little maid."
+
+"'Taken,' you say? Then you are not of the king's side?"
+
+He came a step nearer and faced me boldly. "Listen, sir: two of my sons
+were left on the bloody field of Camden, and the butcher Banastre
+Tarleton slew the other two at Fishing Creek. A month since a band of
+roving savages, armed with King George's muskets, mind you, sir, came
+down upon us at Northby, and this little maid's mother--"
+
+He stopped and choked; and the child looked up into my face with her
+blue eyes full of nameless terror. "Oh, I want my mammy!" she said.
+"Won't you find her for me, Cappy Jack?"
+
+I slipped from the saddle, still clasping the little one tightly in my
+arms.
+
+"Enough, sir," I said, when I could trust myself to speak. "This same
+King George's minions have made me a homeless outcast, too. I live but
+to give some counter stroke, if I may."
+
+"Ha!" said the old man, starting back; "then you are for our side? But
+your uniform--"
+
+"Is that of an Austrian officer, my good sir, which I should right
+gladly exchange for the buff and blue, but that I can serve the cause
+better in this."
+
+He dropped the Queen's-arm, took the child from me and bade me welcome
+to his cabin and all it held. But I was not minded to make him a sharer
+in my private peril.
+
+"No," said I. "Tell me how I may find Gilbert Town and Major Ferguson's
+rendezvous, and I will ride whilst I can see the way."
+
+He looked at me narrowly. "Ferguson left Gilbert Town some days since.
+If 'tis the place you seek, you are gone far out of your way; if 'tis
+the man--"
+
+"'Tis the man," I cut in hastily.
+
+The patriarch shook his head.
+
+"If you be of our side, as you say, he will hang you out of hand."
+
+"So I can make my errand good, I care little how soon he hangs me."
+
+"And what may your errand be? Mayhap I can help you."
+
+"It is to bring him to a stand till the mountain men can overtake him."
+
+The old man trembled with excitement like a boy going into his first
+battle.
+
+"Ah, if you could--if you could!" he cried. "But 'tis too late, now.
+Listen: his present camp is but three miles to the westward on Buffalo
+Creek. I was there no longer ago than the Wednesday. I--I made my
+submission to him--curse him--so that I might mayhap learn of his plans.
+He told me all; how that now he was safe; that the mountaineers were
+gone off from the fording of the Broad on a false scent; that Tarleton
+with four hundred of the legion would soon be marching to his relief.
+
+"I stole away when I could, and that night took horse and rode twenty
+miles to Tom Sumter's camp at Flint Hill--all to little purpose, I fear.
+Poor Tom is still desperately sick of his Fishing Creek wounds, and
+Colonel Lacey was the only officer fit to go after Shelby and the
+mountain men to set them straight. I should have gone myself, but--"
+
+"Stay, my good friend," said I; "you go too fast for me. If Ferguson is
+still out of communication with the main at Charlotte, we may halt him
+yet."
+
+The old man made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"'Tis a thing done because it is as good as done. The major will break
+camp and march to-morrow morning, and he can reach Charlotte at ease in
+two days. What with their losing of his trail, the mountain men are
+those same two days behind him."
+
+"None the less, we shall halt him," said I. "Have you ever an inkhorn
+and a quill in your cabin?"
+
+"Both; at your service, sir. But I can not understand--"
+
+"We may call it the little maid's judgment on those who have made her
+fatherless. But for her stopping of me I should have come unprepared
+into the camp of the enemy. I am the bearer of a letter from Lord
+Cornwallis to this same Major Ferguson."
+
+"You?--a bearer of Lord Cornwallis's despatches?" The old man put a
+blade's length between us and held the little one aloft as if he feared
+I might do her a mischief. I laughed and bade him be comforted.
+
+"'Tis a long story, and I may not take the time to tell it now. But a
+word will suffice. Like yourself, I made my submission--and for the same
+purpose. My Lord accepted it and made me his despatch-bearer because he
+thought I knew the way to Ferguson when no one else knew it. But enough
+of this; time presses. Let me have ink and the quill."
+
+The old man led the way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my
+disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet;
+but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the
+paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab
+table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a
+peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding
+by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk engagement with
+the over-mountain men.
+
+How to change such an order to reverse it in effect, I knew no more than
+a yokel; but here again my ancient ally showed himself a man of parts.
+Dressing the pen to make it the fellow of that used by my Lord
+Cornwallis, he scanned the handwriting of the letter closely, made a few
+practice pot-hooks to get the imitative hang of it, and wrote this
+_postscriptum_ at the bottom of the sheet.
+
+    _Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his
+    despatches. Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the
+    legion, will take the road for you to-night. If battle is forced
+    upon you, make a stand and hold the enemy in check till
+    reinforcements come.
+
+    Cornwallis._
+
+The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve.
+'Twas a most beautiful forgery. My Lord's crabbed handwriting was copied
+to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could
+have told which was his own; 'twas the same circle "C," the same
+printing "r," the same heavy precision throughout.
+
+"Capital!" said I. "Now, if the lightning would but strike these
+pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand's turn."
+
+"How?" said the patriarch; "are you followed?"
+
+I told him I was; told him of my Lord's plot within a plot--that three
+light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate
+despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.
+
+At this the old warhorse--I learned afterward that he had fought through
+the French and Indian war--wagged his beard and his eye flashed.
+
+"We must stop them," he said. "Three of them, do you say?"
+
+"Three white men and an Indian trailer."
+
+"Ha! If it were not for the little maid.... Let me think."
+
+He fell to pacing up and down before the fire on the hearth, and I took
+the small one on my knee to let her chatter to me. 'Twas five full
+minutes before my ancient gave me the worth of his cogitations, but when
+he did speak it was much to the purpose.
+
+"These marplot rear-guards of yours will spoil it all if they come to
+Ferguson's camp either before or after you. Do they know the major's
+present whereabouts?"
+
+"No more than I did an hour ago. As I take it, they are depending on me
+to show them the way."
+
+"Well, then; dead men tell no tales."
+
+"But, my good friend, you forget there are four of them and only two of
+us! We should stand little chance with them in fair fight."
+
+Again the old man's eyes snapped and glowed as if pent-fires were behind
+them.
+
+"Was it fair fight when Tarleton's men rode in upon Tom Sumter's rest
+camp at Fishing Creek and cut down this little maid's father whilst he
+was naked and bathing in the stream? Was it fair fight when King
+George's Indian devils came down in the dead of night upon our
+defenseless house at Northby? Never talk to me of fairness, sir, whilst
+all this bloody tyranny is afoot!"
+
+I thought upon it for a little space. 'Twas none so easy to decide. On
+one hand, stern loyalty to the cause I had espoused passed instant
+sentence on these four men whose lives stood in the way; on the other,
+common humanity cried out and called it murder.
+
+Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy
+since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone
+valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out
+of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my
+trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race.
+I could not do it.
+
+"No," said I, firmly. "These followers of mine must be stopped, as you
+say, else there is no need of my going on. But there must be no
+butcher's work."
+
+The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.
+
+"A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take
+another's," quoth he.
+
+"Truly; and I am most willing on both heads. But we have had enough and
+more than enough of midnight massacre."
+
+Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we
+were both waxing warm upon it. But in the midst the little maid came
+running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.
+
+"Injun man!" was all she could say; but that was enough. At a bound I
+reached the door. An Indian was at my horse's head, loosing the halter,
+as I thought. Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara
+was at his back.
+
+Luckily, he had the wit not to move. "No kill Uncanoola," he muttered,
+this without the stirring of a muscle. Then, as if he were talking to
+the horse: "White squaw, she send 'um word; say 'good by.'"
+
+My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.
+
+"Mistress Margery, you mean? Do you come from her?"
+
+"She send 'um word; say 'good by,'" he repeated.
+
+"What else did she say?" I demanded.
+
+"No say anyt'ing else: say 'good by.'" He turned upon me at that and I
+saw why he had kept his face averted. He had on the war paint of a
+Cherokee chief.
+
+"Uncanoola good Chelakee now," he grinned. "Help redcoat soldier find
+Captain Long-knife. Wah!"
+
+I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of
+the thing staggered me. He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of
+the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian
+tracker to lift my trail, 'twas he who had volunteered. But now my
+spirits rose. With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully
+and yet fairly with my rear-guard.
+
+"Where are your masters now?" I asked.
+
+He spat upon the ground. "Catawba chief has no master," he said,
+proudly. "Redcoat pale-faces yonder," pointing back the way I had come.
+"Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe."
+
+"We must take them," said I.
+
+He nodded. "Kill 'um all; take scalp. Wah!"
+
+The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling. But I undertook to
+cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the
+Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable
+battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his
+pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old
+benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.
+
+So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had
+been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen's-arm for a
+weapon. So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out. When the
+night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their
+camp, sparing life as we could.
+
+When all was settled, the old man gave us a supper of his humble fare,
+after which we went into the open again to sit out the hours of waiting.
+The rain had ceased, but the night was cloudy and the darkness a soft
+black veil to shroud the nearest objects. High overhead the autumn wind
+was sighing in the tree-tops, and now and again a sharper gust would
+bring down a pattering volley of lodged rain-drops on the fallen leaves.
+
+Uncanoola sat apart in stoical silence, smoking his long-stemmed pipe.
+The old man and I talked in low tones, or rather he would tell me of his
+past whilst I sat and listened, holding the little maid in my arms.
+
+After a time the child fell asleep, and I craved permission to put her
+in the little crib bed in the chimney corner. The flickering light of
+the fire fell upon her innocent face when I loosed the clasp of the tiny
+hands about my neck and laid her down. Again the wave of softness
+submerged me and I bent to leave a kiss upon the sweet unconscious lips.
+
+Ah, my dears, you may smile again, if you will; but at that moment I had
+a far-off glimpse of the beatitude of fatherhood; I was no longer the
+hard old soldier I have drawn for you; I was but a man, hungering and
+thirsting for the love of a wife and trusting, clinging little children
+like this sweet maid.
+
+I rose, turning my back upon the chimney corner and its holdings with a
+sigh. For now the time was come for action, and I must needs be a man of
+blood and iron again.
+
+Lacking the Catawba to guide us, I doubt if either the old man or I
+could have found my rearguard's bivouac near the trail I had left. But
+Uncanoola led us straight through the pitchy darkness; and when we were
+come upon the three soldiers we found them all asleep around the handful
+of camp-fire.
+
+'Twould have been murder outright to kill them thus; and now I think the
+old patriarch forgot his wrongs and was as merciful as I. But not so the
+Catawba. He had armed himself with a stout war-club, and before I was
+free to stop him he had knocked two of the three sleepers senseless, and
+would have battered out their brains but for the old man's intervention.
+
+As for the officer, I had flung myself upon him in the rush and was
+having a pretty handful of him. But though he was broad in the
+shoulders, and as agile as a cat, he was taken at a sleeping man's
+disadvantage, and so I presently had the better of him.
+
+"Enough, man! 'tis as good as a feast!" he cried, when I had him fast
+pinioned; and thereupon I let him have breath and freedom to sit up. In
+the act he had his first good sight of me, as I had mine of him. 'Twas
+Tybee and no other.
+
+"Gad! my Captain," he said, feeling his throat. "If you have a grip like
+that for your friends, I'm damned glad I'm not your enemy."
+
+"But you are," I rejoined, rather shamefacedly, yet thankful to the
+finger-tips that I had not consented to a massacre. "I am for the
+Congress and the Commonwealth, Lieutenant, and you are my prisoner. May
+I trouble you for the despatches you carry?"
+
+He looked up at me with a queer grimace on his boyish face.
+
+"The devil! but you're a cool hand, Captain Ireton! Whatever you were in
+that coil at Appleby, you've led the spy's long suit this time. And I'm
+not sure whether I like you any the worse for it, if so be you must be a
+rebel." And with that, he gave me the sealed packet and asked what I
+would do with him.
+
+His query set me thinking. As for the two stunned troopers, I meant to
+turn them over to the old man for safe keeping; but I was loath to make
+it harder than need be for this good-natured youngster. So I put him
+upon his honor.
+
+"Do you know what this packet contains?" I asked.
+
+He laughed. "My Lord did not honor me with his confidence. I was to
+follow you in to Major Ferguson's camp, deliver the despatches, and
+vanish."
+
+"Good; then you need tell no lies. When the Indian has fetched my horse,
+I shall ride to Ferguson's camp, and you may ride with me. I shall ask
+no more than this; that you do not fight again till you are exchanged;
+and that you will not tell Major Ferguson whose prisoner you are. Do you
+accept the terms?"
+
+"Gad! I'd be a fool not to. But what's in the wind, Captain? Surely you
+can tell me, now that I am safely out of the running."
+
+"You will know in a day or two; and in the meantime ignorance is your
+best safety. You can tell Major Ferguson that you were waylaid on the
+road by a party of the enemy, and that you were paroled and fell in with
+me."
+
+He looked a little rueful, as a good soldier would, but was disposed to
+make the best of a bad bargain.
+
+"Here's my hand on it," he said; and a little later we had dragged the
+two troopers to the cabin, where the old man became surety for their
+safe keeping, and were feeling our way cautiously westward at the heels
+of the Catawba who had taken his directions from our patriarch.
+
+We pressed forward in silence through the shadowy labyrinth of the wood
+for a time, but at the crossing of a small runlet where we would stop to
+let the horses drink, Tybee burst out a-laughing.
+
+"'Tis as good as a play," he said. "Three several times I've had to
+change my mind about you, Captain Ireton, and I'm not cock-sure I have
+your measure yet. But I'll say this: if you've strung my Lord
+successfully, you'll be the first to do it and come off alive in the
+end."
+
+"The end is not yet, my good friend; and I may not come off better than
+the others," I rejoined. And with that we fared on again till we could
+see the camp-fires of Ferguson's little army twinkling between the tree
+trunks.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+IN WHICH WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER
+
+
+As you may be sure, Major Patrick Ferguson was far too good a soldier to
+leave his camp unguarded on any side, and whilst we were yet a far
+cannon-shot from the glimmering fires a sentry's challenge halted us.
+
+To the man's "Halt! Who goes there?" I gave the word "Friends," salving
+my conscience for the needful lie as I might.
+
+"Advance, friends, and give the countersign."
+
+I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a
+paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken
+to Major Ferguson's headquarters. There was some little cautious
+demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for
+the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field
+commander.
+
+I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it. The little
+army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking
+and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the
+camp-fires of these auxiliaries. But a different air was abroad in the
+camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of
+the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.
+
+Major Ferguson's tent was on a hillock some distance back from the
+stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and
+myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our
+challenging on the sentry line.
+
+Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table,
+transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with
+gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism--the
+disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious
+Scotchman was the inventor.
+
+Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave
+us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only
+when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.
+
+"From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well," was all the answer the
+Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.
+
+Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a
+sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.
+
+"I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing
+despatches"--so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue
+clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence
+than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully
+doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken
+from Tybee.
+
+Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter
+action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg
+at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel
+gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of
+benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much
+more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of
+failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the
+timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was
+reaching for the packet--nay, when he had it in his hand--I started back
+with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous _skir-r-r_ of a
+rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.
+
+In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the
+doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in
+their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing
+moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and
+yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all
+across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my
+plot--and, belike, the plotter as well--was secured and quickly juggled
+into hiding.
+
+"Damme! see now what you've done; you've spilt my breech-charger all
+about the place!" rasped the major, when all was over. And then: "Who
+the devil are ye, anyway; and what do ye want wi' me?"
+
+I clicked my heels, saluted, and gave him the express from my Lord--the
+right one, this time. He tore off the wrapping, swore a hearty soldier
+oath when he read the fore part of the letter and clapped his leg
+joyfully, like the brave gentleman that he was, when he came to the
+_postscriptum_.
+
+"Ye're a fine fellow, Captain; ye've brought me good news," he said;
+then he bade an aide call Captain de Peyster, his second in command, and
+in the same breath gave Tybee and me in charge to an ensign for our
+billeting for the night.
+
+You will conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy
+planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into
+the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the
+huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions
+against hallooing before you are out of the wood. Captain de Peyster was
+come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was
+a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black,
+his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the
+sentries, burst into the tent.
+
+"Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!" he shrieked, pointing at me.
+
+As you would guess, all talk paused at this dramatic interruption, and
+all eyes were turned upon me. Had the little viper been content to rest
+his charge upon the simple accusation, I know not what might have
+happened. But when he got his breath he burst out in a tirade of the
+foulest abuse, cursing me up one side and down the other, and ending in
+a gibbering fit of rage that left him pallid and foaming at the
+lips--and gave me my cue.
+
+"'Tis the little madman of Queensborough," I said, coolly, explaining to
+the bluff major. "His mania takes the form of a curious hatred for me,
+though I know not why. Two days since, he was put in arrest by my Lord's
+authority for threatening my life and that of his master's daughter.
+Now, it would seem, he has broken jail and followed me hither."
+
+"A lunatic, eh? He looks it, every inch," said the major; and the
+blackguard lawyer, hearing my counter accusation, was doing his best to
+give it a savor of likelihood by fighting frantically with the two
+soldiers who had followed him into the tent.
+
+"Out wi' him!" commanded the major. "We've no time to foolish away wi' a
+Bedlamite. Take him away and peg him out, and gi' him a dash o' water to
+cool his head."
+
+Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his
+attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing. So
+he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and
+when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.
+
+Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our
+blankets before one of the camp-fires. But just as I was dropping asleep
+he broke out with, "I would you might tell me what piece of rebel
+villainy this is that I've been a winking accomplice to."
+
+I laughed. "'Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw. And
+surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he's thirsting
+for. Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING
+
+
+The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised
+about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to
+find a strong position. From this it was evident that a battle was
+imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the
+patriots.
+
+From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of
+the situation. A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of
+the over-mountain men of Clark's party and had sent them to the
+settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form--or rather with
+the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of
+an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.
+
+This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted.
+Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the
+Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the
+stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more
+Virginians.
+
+Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other
+scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland,
+Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as
+the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers.
+Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it
+best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army;
+and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a
+pursuit.
+
+From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be
+little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered
+himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis's
+commands to the contrary. In his despatches he was continually urging
+the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a
+sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted
+enemy. But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him
+turned whatever scale there was to turn. He had now with him some eleven
+hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had
+every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the
+night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major
+Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.
+
+For his battle-ground Major Ferguson chose the top of a forest-covered
+hill, the last and lowest elevation in the spur named that day King's
+Mountain.
+
+In some respects the position was all that could be desired. There was
+room on the flat hilltop for an orderly disposition of the fighting
+force; and the slopes in front and rear were steep enough to give an
+attacking enemy a sharp climb. Moreover, there was a plentiful
+outcropping of stone on the summit, scantiest on the broad or outer end
+of the hill, and this was so disposed as to form a natural breastwork
+for the defenders.
+
+But there were disadvantages also, the chief of these being the heavy
+wooding of the slopes to screen the advance of the assaulting party; and
+while the major was busy making his dispositions for the fight, I was on
+tenter-hooks for fear he would have the trees felled to belt the
+breastwork with a clear space.
+
+He did not do it, being restrained, as I afterward learned, by his
+uncertainty as to whether or no the mountain men had cannon. Against
+artillery posted on the neighboring hillocks the trees were his best
+defense, and so he left them standing.
+
+As you would suppose, my situation was now become most trying, and poor
+Tybee's was scarcely less so. Knowing my name and circumstance, and
+having, moreover, a high regard for my old field-marshal's genius, Major
+Ferguson was very willing to make use of my experience. These askings
+from one whom I knew for a brave and honorable gentleman let me fall
+between two stools. As a patriot spy, it was my duty to turn the major's
+confidence as a weapon against him. But as an officer and a gentleman I
+could by no means descend to such depths of perfidy.
+
+In this dilemma I sought to steer a middle course, saying that I must
+beg exemption because my long hard ride had re-opened my old sword
+wound--as indeed it had. So the major generously let me be, thus heaping
+coals of fire upon my head; and I kept out of his way, consorting with
+Tybee, who, like myself, must be an onlooker in the coming fray.
+
+As for the lieutenant, he was all agog to learn more than I dared tell
+him, and it irked him most nettlesomely to have a fight in prospect in
+the which he was in honor bound not to take a hand. Time and again he
+begged me to release him from his parole; and when I would not, he was
+for fighting me a duel with his freedom for a stake.
+
+"Consider of it, Captain Ireton," he pleaded. "For God's sake, put
+yourself in my place. Here am I, in the camp of my friends, gagged and
+bound by my word to you whilst your infernal plot, whatever it may be,
+works out to the _coup de grace_. Ye gods! it would have been far more
+merciful had you run me through in our wrestling match last night!"
+
+"Mayhap," said I, curtly. "'Twas but the choice between two evils.
+Nevertheless, in time to come I hope you may conclude that this is the
+lesser of the two."
+
+"No, I'm damned if I shall!" he retorted, fuming like a disappointed
+boy, and minding me most forcibly of my hot-headed Richard Jennifer. And
+then he would repeat: "I thought you were my friend."
+
+"So I am, as man to man. But this matter concerns the welfare of a cause
+to which I have sworn fealty. Take your own words back, my lad, and put
+yourself in my place. Can I do less than hold you to your pledge?"
+
+"No, I suppose not," he would say, grumpily. "Yet 'tis hard; most
+devilish hard!"
+
+"'Tis the fortune of war. Another day the shoe may be upon the other
+foot."
+
+The baggage wagons had been massed across the broad end of the hill to
+eke out the stone breastwork, and the last of these arguing colloquies
+took place beneath one of the wagons whither we had crept for shelter
+from the rain, which was now pouring again. In the midst of our talk,
+Major Ferguson dived to share our shelter, dripping like a water
+spaniel.
+
+"Ha! ye're carpet soldiers, both of ye!" he snorted, and then he began
+to swear piteously at the rain.
+
+"'Twill be worse for the enemy than for us," said Tybee. "We can at
+least keep our powder dry."
+
+"Damn the enemy!" quoth the major, cheerfully. "So the weather does not
+put the creeks up and hold Tarleton and Major Gibbs back from us, 'tis a
+small matter whether the rebels' powder be dry or soaked."
+
+"You have made all your dispositions, Major?" Tybee asked.
+
+The major nodded. "All in apple-pie order, no thanks to either of ye.
+'Tis a strong position, this, eh, Captain Ireton? I'm thinking not all
+the rebel banditti out of hell will drive us from it."
+
+"'Tis good enough," I agreed; and here the talk was broken off by the
+major's diving out to berate some of his Tory militiamen who were
+preparing to make a night of it with a jug of their vile country liquor.
+
+The rain continued all that Friday night and well on into the forenoon
+of the Saturday. During this interval we waited with scouts out for the
+upcoming of the mountain men. At noon Major Ferguson sent a final
+express to Lord Cornwallis, urging the hurrying on of the
+reinforcements, not knowing that his former despatch had been
+intercepted, nor that Tarleton had not as yet started to the rescue. A
+little later the scouts began to come in one by one with news of the
+approaching riflemen.
+
+There was but a small body of them, not above a thousand men in all, so
+the spies said, and my heart misgave me. They were without cannon and
+they lacked bayonets; and moreover, when all was said, they were but
+militia, all untried save in border warfare with the Indians. Could they
+successfully assault the fortified camp whose defenders--thanks to the
+major's ingenuity--had fitted butcher-knives to the muzzles of their
+guns in lieu of bayonets? Nay, rather would they have the courage to
+try?
+
+'Twas late in the afternoon before these questions were answered. The
+rain had ceased, and the chill October sunlight filtered aslant through
+the trees. With the clearing skies a cold wind had sprung up, and on the
+hilltop the men cowered behind the rock breastwork and waited in
+strained silence. At the last moment Major Ferguson sent Captain de
+Peyster to me with the request that I take command of the Tory force set
+apart to defend the wagon barricade--this if my weariness would permit.
+I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.
+
+"Say no more, Captain," said this generous soldier, when I began some
+lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take
+shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive."
+
+And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick
+Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he
+insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was--and paid the
+penalty.
+
+I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the
+drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry
+from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee
+gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be
+seen, and I stood with him.
+
+"Your friends are running," he said, when there was no reply to the
+opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the
+slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to
+right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.
+
+"I think not," I objected, denying the apparent fact. "They have come
+too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley."
+
+"But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it
+at the top," he insisted.
+
+"That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so;
+here they come!"
+
+At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive
+with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after
+volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the
+dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars
+I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run,
+these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the
+hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting
+encouragements of the leaders--this until their circling line was
+completed.
+
+Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to
+shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began
+to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings
+and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.
+
+The effect of this fine-bead target practice--for it was naught
+else--was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear,
+crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all
+abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end
+of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was
+appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed
+commands of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging
+his men up to still closer quarters. "A little nearer, my brave boys; a
+little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as
+good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"
+
+You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought
+as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them
+did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them
+witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight
+for fear's sake.
+
+And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous
+in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and
+there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew
+thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but
+it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of
+the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster,
+too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's
+Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de
+Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen
+some little way down the slope.
+
+But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little
+circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the
+wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what
+was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must
+picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose
+upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage
+ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of
+"God save the king!" yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in
+homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front
+and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a hell set free, with no
+quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
+wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
+dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.
+
+In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
+coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
+with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
+work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
+and let me die a soldier's death.
+
+So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
+fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
+of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving
+as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently
+down into the valley of shadows.
+
+And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying
+Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon
+between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I
+heard the crack of the Deckard, the _zip_ of the bullet singing at my
+ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a
+rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I
+felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another
+time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the butt
+of his rifle--and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him. I saw
+the grapple, sprang to my feet and whipped out my sword.
+
+"Stop!" I commanded; "you have broken your parole, Lieutenant!"
+
+The freed borderer glared from one to the other of us. "Loonies!" he
+yelled; "I'll slaughter the both of ye!" And so he would have done, I
+make no doubt, had we not laid hold of him together and heaved him back
+over the breastwork.
+
+These are but incidents, points of contact where the fray touched us two
+at the wagon barricade. I pass them by with the mention, as I have
+passed by the sterner horrors of that furious killing-time. These last
+are too large for my poor pen. As we could gather in the din and
+tumult, the mountain men rushed again and again to the attack, and as
+often the brave major, or De Peyster, led the bayonet charges that
+pushed them back. Yet in the end the unerring bullet outpressed the
+bayonet; there came a time when flesh and blood could no longer endure
+the death-dealing cross-fire from front and rear.
+
+I saw the end was near when the major ordered the final charge, and
+Captain de Peyster formed his line and led it forward at a double-quick.
+The mountaineers held more than half the hilltop now, and this forlorn
+hope was to try to drive them down the farther slopes. On it went, and I
+could see the men pitch and tumble out of the line until at
+bayonet-reach of the riflemen there were less than a dozen afoot and fit
+to make the push.
+
+De Peyster fought his way back to the wagons, gasping and bloody. Some
+of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely
+wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod
+into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the
+white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat
+it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in his word.
+
+"'Tis no use, Major; there is no more fight left in us! Five minutes
+more of this and we'll be shot down to a man!"
+
+Ferguson's reply was a raging oath broad enough to cover all the enemy
+and his own beaten remnant as well; and then, before a hand could be
+lifted to stay him, he had wheeled his horse and was galloping straight
+for the patriot line at the farther extremity of the hilltop.
+
+What he meant to do will never be known till that great day when all
+secrets shall be revealed. For that furious oath was this brave
+gentleman's last word to us or to any. A dozen bounds, it may be, the
+good charger carried him; then the storm of rifle-bullets beat him from
+the saddle. And so died one of the gallantest officers that ever did an
+unworthy king's work on the field of battle.
+
+I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of
+the British commander. 'Twas little to our credit, but I may not pass it
+over in silence. De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white
+flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer
+and many others. Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once
+more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the
+panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.
+
+"God!" said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line
+with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as
+he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee
+was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when
+I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.
+A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's
+father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de
+Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+VAE VICTIS
+
+
+If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of
+this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more
+on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the
+dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my
+dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the
+victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.
+
+But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your
+mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle
+of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with
+the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from
+Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought
+somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.
+
+Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many
+of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors
+had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder
+that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful
+counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the
+cord and tree.
+
+But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian,
+William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay
+and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night,
+made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the
+groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday
+found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.
+
+With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and
+since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching,
+the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard
+for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but
+'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side
+by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just
+before the ending of the battle.
+
+The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready
+fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal
+from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton
+with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the
+mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the
+hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.
+
+As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my
+hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously
+hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.
+
+But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of
+colonels and put to the question.
+
+"Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir," said Isaac Shelby, looking
+me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. "Explain your
+rank and standing, if you please."
+
+I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only
+black looks for my pains.
+
+"'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,--too strange to be believable," quoth
+Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton--of the kind we need not
+cumber ourselves with on a march."
+
+"Who says that word of me?" I demanded, caring not much for that to
+which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.
+
+Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. "Stand out,
+John Whittlesey," he directed; and I found myself face to face with that
+rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at
+the fording of the Catawba.
+
+This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week
+earlier I had passed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this
+though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the
+witness himself, he had misdoubted me all along, but the colonel had
+trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of
+which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he
+confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company
+with me on the road to Charlotte.
+
+I looked from one to another of my judges.
+
+"If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story," I said.
+
+"It is not all," said Shelby. "Mr. Pengarvin, stand forth."
+
+There was another stir in the backgrounding group and the pettifogger
+edged his way into the circle, keeping well out of hand-reach of me. How
+he had made shift to escape from Ferguson's men, to change sides, and to
+turn up thus serenely in the ranks of the over-mountain men, I know not
+to this day, nor ever shall know.
+
+"Tell these gentlemen what you have told me," said Shelby, briefly; and
+the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how
+in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
+family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the
+length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen
+Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted
+aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson. Also,
+he suggested that if I should be searched some proof of my duplicity
+might be found upon me.
+
+At this William Campbell nodded to two of his Virginians, and I was
+searched forthwith, and that none too gently. In the breast pocket of my
+hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had
+taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the
+interview with Major Ferguson.
+
+Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around
+among his colleagues.
+
+"I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir," he said to me,
+sternly. "'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it
+sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you
+aught further to say, Captain Ireton?--aught that may excuse us for not
+leaving you behind us in a halter?"
+
+Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely
+the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me?
+Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then
+mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they
+would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down
+here.
+
+'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of
+a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the
+manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same
+bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the
+storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay
+tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim
+Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers;
+the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in
+the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a
+bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.
+
+"Score one for me, Jack!" he cried. "We were fair at t'other end of the
+mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two
+Carolinas who could swear the match of that." Then he whirled upon my
+judges. "What is this, gentlemen?--a court martial? Captain Ireton is my
+friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?"
+
+Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought
+in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as
+the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he
+said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay
+the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just
+found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and
+undelivered. And the tenor of it was precisely opposite to that of an
+order calculated to delay the major's march, as Mr. Jennifer could see
+if he would read it.
+
+While Sevier was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of
+his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about
+with red tape.
+
+"'Pears to me like you Injun-killers from t'other side o' the mounting
+is in a mighty hot sweat to hang somebody," he said, as coolly as if he
+were addressing a mob of underlings. "Here's a mess o' billy-doos with
+Lord Cornwallis's name to 'em that I found 'mongst Major Ferguson's
+leavings. If you'll look 'em over, maybe you'll find out, immejitly _if_
+not sooner, that Cap'n John here is telling ye the plumb truth."
+
+The papers were examined hastily, and presently John Sevier lighted upon
+the despatch I had carried and delivered. Thereat the colonels put their
+heads together; and then my case was re-opened, with Sevier as
+spokesman.
+
+"We have a letter here which appears to be the original order to
+Ferguson, Captain Ireton. Can you repeat from memory the _postscriptum_
+which you say was added to it?"
+
+I gave the gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and
+thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one
+another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng
+that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer to
+wake the echoes.
+
+'Twas while this burst of gratulation was abuzz that Ephraim Yeates
+raised a cry of his own.
+
+"Stop that there black-legged imp o' the law!" he shouted, pushing his
+way out of the circle. "He's the one that ought to hang!"
+
+There was a rush for the wagon barricade, a clatter of horse-hoofs on
+the hillside below, and Yeates's rifle went to his face. But the bullet
+flew wide, and the black-garbed figure clinging to the horse's mane was
+soon out of sight among the trees.
+
+"Ez I allow, ye'd better look out for that yaller-skinned little
+varmint, Cap'n John," quoth the old man, carefully wiping his rifle
+preparatory to reloading it. "He's rank pizen, he is, and ye'll have to
+break his neck sooner 'r later. I 'lowed to save ye the trouble, but old
+Bess got mighty foul yestiddy, with all the shootings and goings on, and
+I hain't got no lead-brush to clean her out."
+
+Now that I was fully exonerated I was free to go and come as I chose;
+nay, more, I was urged to cast in my lot with the over-mountain
+partizans. As to this, I took counsel with Richard Jennifer whilst the
+colonels were setting their commands in order for the march and loading
+the prisoners with the captured guns and ammunition.
+
+"What is to the fore, Dick?" I asked; "more fighting?"
+
+The lad shook his head. "Never another blow, I fear, Jack. These fellows
+crossed the mountain to whip Ferguson. Having done it they will go
+home."
+
+I could not forego a hearty curse upon this worst of all militia
+weaknesses, the disposition to disperse as soon as ever a battle was
+fought.
+
+"'Tis nigh on to a crime," said I. "This victory, smartly followed up,
+might well be the turning of the tide for us."
+
+But the lad would not admit the qualifying condition. "'Twill be no less
+as it is," he declared. "Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the
+cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my
+Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will
+have plenty of time to set himself in motion, slow as he is."
+
+'Twas then I had an inspiration, and I thought upon it for a moment.
+
+"What are your plans, Richard?"
+
+He shook his head. "I have none worth the name."
+
+"Then you are not committed to Colonel Sevier for a term of service?"
+
+"No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be
+fighting hereaway,--Ephraim Yeates and I,--and we came as volunteers."
+
+"Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To
+make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be
+apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the
+news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say. Let us take horse and ride
+post, we two; you to Gates at Hillsborough, and I to Charlotte."
+
+"I had thought of my part of that," he said in a muse. Then he came
+alive to the risk I should run. "But you can't well go back to
+Cornwallis now, Jack: 'tis playing with death. There will be other
+news-carriers--there are sure to be; and a single breath to whisper what
+you have done will hang you higher than Haman."
+
+I shrugged at this. "'Tis but a war hazard."
+
+He looked at me curiously. I saw a shrewd question in his eyes and set
+instant action as a barrier in the way of its asking.
+
+"Let us find Colonel Sevier and beg us the loan of a pair of horses,"
+said I; and so we were kept from coming upon the dangerous ground of
+pointed questions and evasive answers.
+
+Somewhat to my surprise, both Sevier and Shelby fell in at once with our
+project, commending it heartily; and I learned from the lips of that
+courtliest of frontiersmen, "Nolichucky Jack," the real reason for the
+proposed hurried return of the over-mountain men. The Cherokees, never
+to be trusted, had, as it seemed, procured war supplies from the British
+posts to the southward, and were even now on the verge of an uprising.
+By forced marches these hardy borderers hoped to reach their homes in
+time to defend them. Otherwise, as both commanders assured us, they
+would take the field with Gates.
+
+"We have done what we could, Captain Ireton, and not altogether what we
+would," said Sevier in the summing-up. "It remains now for General Gates
+to drive home the wedge we have entered." Then he looked me full in the
+eyes and asked if I thought Horatio Gates would be the man to beetle
+that wedge well into the log.
+
+I made haste to say that I knew little of the general; that I was but a
+prejudiced witness at best, since my father had known and misliked the
+man in Braddock's ill-fated campaign against the French in '55. But
+Richard spoke his mind more freely.
+
+"'Tis not in the man at this pass, Colonel Sevier," he would say; "not
+after Camden. I know our Carolinians as well as any, and they will never
+stand a second time under a defeated leader. If General Washington would
+send us some one else; or, best of all, if he would but come himself--"
+
+"George Washington; ah, there is a man, indeed," said Sevier, his
+dark-blue eyes lighting up. "Whilst he lives, there is always a good
+hope. But we must be doing, gentlemen, and so must you. God speed you
+both. Our compliments to General Gates, Mr. Jennifer; and you may tell
+him what I have told you--that but for our redskin threateners we should
+right gladly join him. As for Lord Cornwallis, you, Captain Ireton, will
+know best what to say to him. I pray God you may say it and come off
+alive to tell us how he took it."
+
+We made our acknowledgments; and when I had bespoken good care for
+Tybee, we took leave of these stout fighters, and of old Ephraim as
+well, since the borderer was to serve as a guide for the over-mountain
+men, at least till they were come upon familiar ground to the westward.
+
+'Twas now hard upon ten of the clock in the forenoon, and we had our
+last sight of the brave little army whilst it was wending its way slowly
+down the slopes of King's Mountain. Of what became of it; how its weary
+march dragged on from day to day; how it was hampered by the train of
+captives, halted by rain-swollen torrents, and was well-nigh starved
+withal; of all these things you may read elsewhere. But now you must
+ride with Richard Jennifer and me, and our way lay to the eastward.
+
+All that Sunday we pressed forward, hasting as we could through the
+stark columned aisles of the autumn-stripped forest, and looking hourly
+to come upon Tarleton's legion marching out to Ferguson's relief.
+
+Since Richard Jennifer had ridden to the hounds in all this middle
+ground from boyhood, we were able to take my blind wanderings in reverse
+as the arrow flies; and by nightfall we were well down upon the main
+traveled road leading to Beattie's fording of the Catawba.
+
+As your map will show you, this was taking me somewhat out of my way to
+the northward; but it was Richard's most direct route to Salisbury and
+beyond, and by veering thus we made the surer of missing Colonel
+Tarleton, who, as we thought, would likely cross the river at the lower
+ford.
+
+Once in the high road we pushed on briskly for the river, nor did we
+draw rein until the sweating beasts were picking their way in the
+darkness down the last of the hills which sentinel the Catawba to the
+westward.
+
+At the foot of this hill a by-road led to Macgowan's ford some six miles
+farther down the river, and here, as I supposed, our ways would lie
+apart. But when we came to the forking of the road, Richard pulled his
+mount into the by-path, clapping the spurs to the tired horse so that
+we were a good mile beyond the forking before I could overtake him.
+
+"How now, lad?" said I, when I had run him down. "Would you take a
+fighting hazard when you need not? There is sure to be a British patrol
+at the lower ford."
+
+He jerked his beast down to a walk and we rode in silence side by side
+for a full minute before he said gruffly: "You'd never find the way
+alone."
+
+I laughed. "Barring myself, you are the clumsiest of evaders, Dick. I am
+on my own ground here, and that you know as well as I."
+
+"Damn you!" he gritted between his teeth. "When we are coming near
+Appleby Hundred you are fierce enough to be rid of me."
+
+I saw his drift at that: how he would take all the chance of capture and
+a spy's rope for the sake of passing within a mile of Mistress Margery,
+or of the house he thought she was in.
+
+"Go back, Dick, whilst you may," said I. "She is not at Appleby
+Hundred."
+
+He turned upon me like a lion at bay.
+
+"What have you done with her?"
+
+"Peace, you foolish boy. I am not her keeper. Her father took her to
+Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home."
+
+He reined up short in the narrow way. "So?" he said, most bitingly. "And
+that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with
+the one to Gates. By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change roles here
+and now!"
+
+Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing. Here was a man who
+had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling
+for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman
+might.
+
+And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say: "You think I am
+standing in your way, Richard Jennifer? Well, so I am; for whilst I live
+you may not have her. Why don't you draw and cut me down?"
+
+'Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.
+
+"On guard!" he cried; "draw and defend yourself!" and with that the
+great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.
+
+What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time
+to parry the descending blow. But at the balancing instant the
+brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the
+death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would,
+with her husband's blood upon his head.
+
+So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came
+down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees' hive buzzing
+in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side. My
+head was on Richard's knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his
+soaked kerchief.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+HOW I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE
+
+
+You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that
+the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke
+out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain
+me outright.
+
+"I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite," he would say. "The devil
+whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse
+to thrust me out of the way. And when I saw you would not stir, 'twas
+too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade. Oh, God help me!
+I'll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me
+to hell again."
+
+"Nay," said I; "no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard. We are but
+two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us. But you
+need not fight me for it. The love is yours--not mine."
+
+"Don't say that, Jack; I'm selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is
+not. I know whereof I speak."
+
+"No," I denied, struggling to my feet; "it has been yours from the
+first, Dick. I am but a sorry interloper."
+
+For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me
+stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the
+effects of the blow, he went on.
+
+"I say I know, and I do, Jack. She has refused me again."
+
+I groaned in spirit. I knew it must have come to that. Yet I would ask
+when and where.
+
+"'Twas on our last day's riding," he went on; "after we had had your
+note saying you would undertake a mission for Colonel Davie."
+
+I took two steps and groped for the horse's bridle rein.
+
+"Did she tell you why she must refuse you?"
+
+He helped me find the rein for my hand and the stirrup for my foot.
+
+"There was no 'why' but the one--she does not love me."
+
+"But I say she does, Dick; and I, too, know whereof I speak."
+
+He flung me into the saddle as a strong man might toss a boy, and I
+understood how that saying of mine had gone into his blood.
+
+"Then there must be some barrier that I know not of," he said. Whereupon
+he put hand to head as one who tries to remember. "Stay; did you not say
+there was a barrier, Jack?--when we were wrestling with death in the
+Indian fires? Or did I dream it?"
+
+"You did not dream it. But you were telling me what she said."
+
+"Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if
+my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she
+gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart
+would burst."
+
+I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was
+up and we were moving on. Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier,
+Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once
+for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?"
+
+"Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool
+and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you
+with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have
+her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood
+there is in the heart at such times."
+
+We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of
+the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning,
+saying, whilst we let the horses drink: "'Tis patrolled on the other
+bank, you say?"
+
+"It was when I passed it a few days agone."
+
+"Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk
+you need not take--to have me with you."
+
+But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if
+there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for
+Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:
+
+"No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a
+second blade to see you safe through."
+
+"And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no
+doubt it will?"
+
+I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I
+should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the
+pinch."
+
+He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.
+
+"By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you
+carry, Jack Ireton!"
+
+"Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my
+friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on."
+
+"But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming
+peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters."
+
+"If I am recognized--yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the
+outpost need not betray me."
+
+At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now
+since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our
+history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you:
+namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a
+muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in
+mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on
+the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord
+Cornwallis got entangled some months later--but I must not anticipate.
+
+We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in
+the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of
+the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster,
+and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the
+steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that
+our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must
+make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long
+before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.
+
+"What for it, then?" he asked, impatiently. "My courage is freezing
+whilst we wait."
+
+"There is nothing for it but to hold straight on across," I said.
+
+"That we can not; 'twill be over the horses' ears. The beasts will drown
+themselves and us as well."
+
+How we should have argued it out I do not know, for just then Jennifer's
+horse, scenting the troop mounts on the farther shore, cocked tail and
+ears, let out a squealing neigh, and fell to curveting and plunging in a
+racket that might have stood for the splashings of an advancing army.
+
+In a twinkling the outpost camp was astir and a bellowing hail came to
+us across the water. Having no answer, the troopers began to let off
+their pieces haphazard in the darkness; and with the singing _zip_ of
+the first musket ball, Richard went battle-mad, as he always did in the
+face of danger.
+
+"At them!" he thundered, clapping spurs to his jaded beast and whipping
+out the great claymore; and so we charged, the forlornest hope that ever
+fell upon an enemy.
+
+How we came ashore alive through the gun-fire is one of those mysteries
+to which every battle adds its quota; but the poor beasts we rode were
+not so lucky. Jennifer's horse went down while we were yet some yards
+from the bank; and mine fell a moment later. To face a score of waiting
+enemies afoot was too much for even Richard's rash courage; so when we
+were free of the struggling horses we promptly dove for shelter under
+the up-stream bank.
+
+Here the darkness stood our friend; and when the redcoat troopers came
+down to the river's edge with torches to see what had become of us, we
+took advantage of the noise they made and stole away up-stream till a
+shelving beach gave us leave to climb to the valley level above.
+
+Richard shook himself like a water-soaked spaniel and laughed grimly.
+
+"Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to
+death," he commented. "What next?"
+
+I made him a bow. "You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain
+Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm
+a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house
+and see what we can discover."
+
+He entered at once into the spirit of the jest, and together we trudged
+the scant mile through the stubble-fields to my old roof-tree. As you
+would guess, we looked to find the manor house turned into an outpost
+headquarters; but now we were desperate enough to face anything.
+
+Howbeit, not to rush blindly into the jaws of a trap, we first routed
+out the old black majordomo at the negro quarters; and when we learned
+from him that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and
+had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more;
+when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and
+grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's
+laying in.
+
+"A toast!" cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet
+with the glass held high. "To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may
+she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another,
+Jack Ireton!"
+
+We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like
+two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one
+of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught
+whilst that first one lived.
+
+You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short
+hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress
+Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart
+the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting
+of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last
+loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for
+what must come--and so it did, though not as I prefigured.
+
+We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began
+to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned
+down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby
+Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and
+two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be
+Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the
+spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a
+mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.
+
+His last word to me was one of generous caution.
+
+"Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There
+will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and
+you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to
+betray you."
+
+"Trust me," said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward,
+and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set
+abuzz in the small hours of the night.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+IN WHICH MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS
+
+
+Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in
+decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with
+nothing like the welcome at the outpost camp that a king's courier had a
+right to expect.
+
+The captain in command was not the one who had passed me out. He was a
+surly brute of the Yorkshire breed; and when he had heard that I was an
+express rider from Major Ferguson, he was pleased to demand my papers.
+
+To this I must needs make answer that I carried no written despatches;
+that my news was for the commander-in-chief's private ear. This I told
+my Yorkshire pig, demanding to be sent, under guard if he chose, to the
+headquarters in Charlotte.
+
+But Captain Nobbut would hear to no such reasonable proposal. On the
+contrary, he would hold me in arrest till he could report me and have
+instructions from his colonel.
+
+Knowing what a stake it was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in
+durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper
+who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of
+Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed
+with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling
+back with an order to set me forthwith upon the road to headquarters.
+
+Once free of the camp of detention you may be sure I put Blackstar to
+his best paces; but hasten as I would it was coming on to evening when I
+passed the inner safety line and galloped down the high street of the
+town.
+
+As luck would have it, the first familiar face I saw was that of Charles
+Stedman, the commissary-general. On my inquiry he directed me straight.
+
+"My Lord is at supper at Mr. Stair's. Have you news, Captain?"
+
+I drew breath of relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the
+bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying
+that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None
+the less, if the commissary-general were pleased to come with me--
+
+He took the hint at once; and he it was who procured me instant
+admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of
+breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.
+
+I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my
+Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor
+of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great
+silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well
+filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military
+family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as
+befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.
+
+At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's
+sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's
+radiant beauty.
+
+"How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?"
+
+I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.
+
+"I do, my Lord."
+
+"Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new
+loyalist levies, I hope?"
+
+I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.
+
+"May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord," I
+said, quietly.
+
+Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it
+had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded
+on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse
+alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have
+been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but
+above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot
+where my lady sat.
+
+"How is this, sir?--explain yourself!" thundered my Lord, forgetting
+for once his mild suavity.
+
+"'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the
+telling," I replied. "I came upon the major some miles this side of the
+crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with
+his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight,
+he obeyed."
+
+"My command?--but I gave him no such order!"
+
+"Nay, truly, you did not--neither in the original nor in the duplicate,
+my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the
+duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our
+purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made
+his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men."
+
+For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord
+quelled the fierce outburst with a word.
+
+"Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this
+traitor," he said. And then to me: "Go on, sir, if you please; there has
+been a battle, as I take it?"
+
+"There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of
+the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or
+dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the
+field was a prisoner."
+
+Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the
+little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking
+momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords
+aside.
+
+"Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton," he said.
+"You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make
+it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your
+submission to me?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"And you have been a rebel from the first?"
+
+I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.
+
+"I have, my Lord--since the day nine years agone when I learned that
+your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation."
+
+"Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the
+western mountains?"
+
+"Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of
+powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others
+followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to
+report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo."
+
+"And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?"
+
+"I do so hope and trust, my Lord."
+
+He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell
+upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to
+break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for,
+bent like a withe and would not snap.
+
+"Put this spy in irons and clear the room," he ordered sharply. And
+this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to
+the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two
+sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word
+which should efface me.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA
+
+
+Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant
+bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs
+where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted
+guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.
+
+The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the
+door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had
+hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the
+consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a
+pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.
+
+I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who
+was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started
+up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the
+mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a
+candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them
+down.
+
+I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering
+that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my
+latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank
+gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs--which, by the by, were
+strangely bitter.
+
+I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came
+again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make
+no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my
+tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.
+
+When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting
+sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the
+oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through
+that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then
+I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis,
+that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof
+windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were
+throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.
+
+Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel,
+I sprang up quickly--and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the
+pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the
+headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman
+in his first gale at sea.
+
+The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a
+sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the
+cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage
+of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill,
+fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen.
+I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too
+petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had
+bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a
+Turkish cursing--the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants
+the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.
+
+It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that
+the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps
+tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and
+tender asked: "Are you awake, Monsieur John?"
+
+I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with
+the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid
+enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that
+I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.
+
+"_Merci, Monsieur_," she said, icily. And then: "Gratitude does not seem
+to be amongst your gifts."
+
+At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.
+
+"Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful
+for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some
+one must needs spoil me of that!"
+
+"Selfish--selfish always and to the last," she murmured. "Do you never
+give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?"
+
+This was past all endurance.
+
+"If I had not, should I be here this moment?" I raved. "You do make me
+sicker than I was, my lady."
+
+"Yet I say you are selfish," she insisted. "What have I done that you
+should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?"
+
+"Let us have plain speech, in God's name," I retorted. "You know well
+enough there was no better way in which I could serve you."
+
+"Do I, indeed, _mon ami_?" she flashed out. "Let me tell you, sir, had
+she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair--or Margery Ireton, if
+you like that better--would kill you with her own hand rather than have
+it said her husband died upon a gallows!"
+
+A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.
+
+"God in Heaven!" I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned
+me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"
+
+She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.
+
+"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you
+are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."
+
+"But you do not deny it!" I cried.
+
+"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die
+shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice
+in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"
+
+"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?"
+
+"Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I
+said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet."
+
+"Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by
+inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are
+having your revenge of me."
+
+"_Merci, encore._ Shall I go away and leave you?"
+
+"No, not that." A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish
+horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I
+added: "But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing
+me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that."
+
+All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my
+throbbing temples.
+
+"Poor Monsieur John!" she said softly; "I meant not to make you suffer
+more, but rather less." Then she found water and a napkin to wring out
+and bind upon my aching head.
+
+At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the
+love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she
+had brought me to this.
+
+"Ah, that is better--better," I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my
+temples gave me some surcease of the agony.
+
+"Then you forgive me?" she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I
+could not tell.
+
+"There is none so much to forgive," I replied. "One hopeless day last
+summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you--in common justice you
+have the right to do what you will with it."
+
+"Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing
+sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you
+than for me."
+
+"I know it," said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must
+grind upon her. "But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps
+in to break the bond."
+
+Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.
+
+"Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as
+heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me
+see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out
+who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all."
+
+But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt
+more like a man and less like a baited bear.
+
+"That is better," said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my
+Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of
+a man who was never minded to run away."
+
+"But you are going to run away," she said, decisively; "and that as
+soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I
+bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not
+poison you this time."
+
+"Stay," I cried. "You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a
+needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can
+find me."
+
+She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.
+
+"No; you are a soldier, and--and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you
+hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the
+battle-field." And with that she left me.
+
+I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned
+to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit,
+Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my
+nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly
+from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the
+English.
+
+And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer
+any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on
+beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me
+how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over
+me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret,"
+she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it."
+
+But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I
+learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis
+had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army
+would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.
+
+"Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has
+begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he
+had not guessed."
+
+On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.
+
+"You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter."
+
+"True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in
+all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam."
+
+Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the
+blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.
+
+"How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst
+out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me
+presently, for good and all."
+
+"Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning
+for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to
+death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling
+us both, Captain Ireton?"
+
+"I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you
+kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open--if you will but
+drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs."
+
+"Oh, yes--a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another
+lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir,
+if you have not."
+
+"Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well
+enough to hang."
+
+"And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before,
+you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton."
+
+I closed my eyes in very weariness.
+
+"You are hard to please, my lady."
+
+"You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away--to-night."
+
+"Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"
+
+"My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As
+Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and
+in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends."
+
+She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the
+last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.
+
+"Stay a moment," I begged. "You are leaving the untangling of this coil
+you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought
+that the Church can undo what the Church has done?"
+
+Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.
+
+"You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all
+else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed;
+then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face
+in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing
+nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the
+wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END
+
+
+It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at
+the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot
+Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to
+listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order
+announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's
+headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the
+Carolinas.
+
+As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer
+and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander;
+and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene,
+the "Hickory Quaker."
+
+Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general
+to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that
+you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first
+inspection of Horatio Gates's poor "shadow of an army" on that dismal
+December day in Charlotte.
+
+In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man,
+pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his
+waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse
+more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and
+arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.
+
+The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his
+face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose
+and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet
+there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful
+and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of
+openness that a dark man is like to miss.
+
+A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my
+summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more
+prophetic eye.
+
+"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at
+the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our
+colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way--a heat at a time, and a blow
+at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.
+
+Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line
+rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and
+choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his
+men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field,
+in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with
+fringings of the same--a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no
+tailor-fine coat could have set it off.
+
+When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater
+pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath,
+that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the
+Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed
+the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in
+open defiance of all discipline.
+
+Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the
+"Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even
+as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways
+and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but
+psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other
+Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel
+the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse,
+out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.
+
+Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of
+light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and
+file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, "the
+Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the
+luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For
+surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler
+patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was
+our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.
+
+But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing
+restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of
+Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop
+to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you
+turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this
+tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.
+
+As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of
+door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British
+gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.
+
+Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my
+dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British
+general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good
+fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's
+command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.
+
+Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of
+action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's
+company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his
+stirrup and share his hazards.
+
+Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks
+preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to
+take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the
+gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages
+of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale,
+and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the
+dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and
+outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who
+was enamored of death.
+
+As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither
+better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the
+skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or
+that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at
+me day and night.
+
+Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I
+was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days
+lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for
+the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the
+more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at
+each remembrance of the hand that gave them.
+
+One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we
+were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the
+half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the
+caretaker of the deserted town house.
+
+As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and
+the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation
+I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra
+massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de
+house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night;
+yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into
+another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen
+woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made
+her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late
+surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking
+to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her
+to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.
+
+I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do
+think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these
+tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving
+because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.
+For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which
+would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of
+the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire
+to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate
+should open for me.
+
+'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her--the desire and another
+thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come,
+and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut
+into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at
+Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with
+Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of
+my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.
+
+As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate,
+drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and
+outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of
+them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As
+I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now
+waiting to sprout and grow.
+
+It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the
+British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had
+my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.
+
+Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without
+telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive
+me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I
+woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian
+scalping-knife thrust through it.
+
+Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most
+palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.
+
+"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily:
+"'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."
+
+At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he
+would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the
+point.
+
+    _Monsieur:
+
+    "When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had
+    done. I have spoken to the good Pere Matthieu, and he has consented
+    to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he
+    should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own
+    seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Pere
+    Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."_
+
+That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through
+twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.
+
+"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him
+off no longer.
+
+"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in
+his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"
+
+"'Tis about--it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I,
+equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course
+you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress
+re-established my right and title to the estate?"
+
+"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"
+
+"About a matter touching it, as I say."
+
+"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat
+between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily
+at the back of it.
+
+When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying.
+He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.
+
+"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but
+half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."
+
+"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep
+down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled
+in me.
+
+"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that
+you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."
+
+"Well? And if I do chance to see her--what then?"
+
+"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of
+me."
+
+"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the
+lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save--"
+
+"Save what?" he broke in savagely.
+
+I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of
+waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.
+
+"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us
+have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go
+with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the
+spying."
+
+"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."
+
+I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have
+the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I
+can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick,
+and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her
+will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine.
+Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show
+you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."
+
+So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and
+mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for
+Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the
+year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT
+
+
+'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the
+Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between
+that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and
+I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise,
+cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which
+we had at the house of one Philbrick--as hot a Tory as we pretended to
+be.
+
+From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British
+outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were
+rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General
+Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would
+presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.
+
+"Has Cornwallis lost his wits?" Dick would say, when we were a-jog on
+the southward road again. "'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit
+for being--if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him
+and cut him off from his line and base."
+
+I laughed. "You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens
+that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be
+true, we have heard only the half of it."
+
+"And the other half will be?--"
+
+"That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one
+or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them."
+
+Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: "'Twill
+be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the
+Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws."
+
+"Right you are," said I. "And now we know what we have to discover."
+
+"Anan?" he queried.
+
+"We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan,
+and when."
+
+"That should be easy--if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us
+at a rope's end."
+
+"We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work
+together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must
+pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of
+the road."
+
+"Good," said he; and then his jaw dropped. "But what if one of us be
+taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!"
+
+"I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it
+before we go a step farther, if you please."
+
+"'Tis out of all reason," he demurred.
+
+"'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant
+venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing
+most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty
+higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John
+Ireton."
+
+At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal
+jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.
+
+"'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me," he grumbled. "The risk is
+chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to
+God knows how many more of them, and belike--"
+
+The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen
+galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put
+sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a
+loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit
+Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from "hornets'-nest" Mecklenburg, also
+bent upon revenge.
+
+The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But
+we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog
+himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as
+prisoners.
+
+A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely
+through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight
+of our goal.
+
+Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared
+less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the
+village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and
+measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord
+Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen
+it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business
+of the moment.
+
+"Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack--I'm new to
+this game--what's to do first when we are among them?"
+
+I laughed at him. "You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis
+for you to make the dispositions."
+
+"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."
+
+"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as
+travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and
+this is what we did.
+
+The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted
+over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was
+a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing
+soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard
+and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner,
+with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment
+as the hostelry afforded.
+
+"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he
+might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.
+
+I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal
+telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel
+to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp
+confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if
+I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to
+serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn
+nothing here."
+
+"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was
+something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to
+whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"
+
+I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's
+weaknesses.
+
+"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the
+dead come back to life?"
+
+"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the
+dominies."
+
+"Then I have seen a ghost--a most horrible mask of a man we both know to
+our cost."
+
+"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."
+
+"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man
+himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the
+word.
+
+"No!" said I.
+
+"I tell you yes."
+
+I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into
+the chair.
+
+"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take
+precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I
+have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live--as he
+is."
+
+"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged, thinking of that
+midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her
+knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if
+you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."
+
+But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw
+farthest and clearest.
+
+"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan
+Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a
+supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits
+at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods!
+but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!"
+
+I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the
+sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This
+reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly.
+What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he
+might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless
+kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance,
+how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we
+both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back
+to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.
+
+"To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make
+shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house," I
+said.
+
+"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done--for
+two plain country gentlemen."
+
+"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the
+throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."
+
+Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
+
+"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish
+me outright."
+
+A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded
+hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the
+camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as
+large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within,
+lights and music and sounds of revelry.
+
+"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of
+substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the
+dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these
+cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
+
+I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the
+hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a
+sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and
+passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
+
+
+For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a
+sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us
+into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus
+early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
+
+As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling
+jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes,
+neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina
+plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of
+the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our
+American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on
+their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering
+silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled _coiffures_, paint, patches and
+powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.
+
+Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to
+have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke
+Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and
+tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an
+agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went
+apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the
+assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without
+ruffling it.
+
+'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp
+for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in
+the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting
+figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and
+prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify
+this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or
+bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own
+self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no
+more gentlemanly welcome than I.
+
+'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged
+away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a
+curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the
+silly persiflage of the belles and beaux--a word here and another
+there--and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look
+for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me
+a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in
+one and the same instant of time.
+
+I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less
+crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room
+serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots
+of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of
+redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the
+viands on the great oaken table in the midst.
+
+Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some
+quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting
+for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate
+lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.
+
+The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white
+shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to
+disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of
+apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease
+with--good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton
+for her company!
+
+Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the
+thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it
+out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady
+give a little start and a shriek.
+
+"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a
+tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me:
+"Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And
+next to Dick: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."
+
+'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had
+known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face
+sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part
+with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly,
+and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with
+me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress
+Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."
+
+Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the
+colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black
+eyes of him boring into my very soul.
+
+Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have
+come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned
+into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the
+ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid
+the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.
+
+"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she
+said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then
+she dipped us a curtsy. "_Au revoir_, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities
+you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to
+grace you here."
+
+When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.
+
+"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with
+me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel
+bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had
+myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between
+and introduced us as sweetly as you please."
+
+"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."
+
+"No! Think you so?"
+
+"'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly
+or not at all. What have you overheard?"
+
+He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest
+to Dan Morgan."
+
+"We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about
+to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of
+an hour at the outer door."
+
+At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a
+slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue
+when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it
+be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr.
+Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off
+cleverly, leaving his fair questioner--and me--none the wiser.
+
+I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set
+purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments
+were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was
+done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me
+where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she
+would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner
+in the dance.
+
+The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter
+was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her
+kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I
+bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had
+learned to know and love whispered in my ear.
+
+"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech
+with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no
+more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another
+epauletted dangler.
+
+She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing
+welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that
+made me wince.
+
+"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done
+taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"
+
+I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand
+sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.
+
+"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost
+me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will
+say how I may find Father Matthieu--"
+
+She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that
+you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do
+heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a
+falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the
+king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and
+tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this
+she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
+
+Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the
+hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and
+myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.
+
+"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery
+is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I
+will do my errand and begone."
+
+"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming
+out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I
+know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer,
+Captain Ireton?"
+
+"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to
+the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."
+
+Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes
+that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the
+voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?--you have not told him?"
+
+"No; I have told no one."
+
+"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"
+
+She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my
+dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing
+she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been
+able to right him thus far.
+
+After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?
+Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know
+you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier
+penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I
+was."
+
+"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving
+hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it
+seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to
+Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw
+the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's
+factor for the witnesses?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know what it was?"
+
+"No."
+
+"'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in
+which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby
+Hundred."
+
+"Appleby Hundred?" she echoed. "But my father--"
+
+"Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others,
+has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is
+my dear friend, and you--"
+
+"I begin to understand--a little," she said, and now her voice was low
+and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: "But now--now
+you would be free again?"
+
+"How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's
+most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman?
+that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the
+taking of it may involve you and Richard?"
+
+"No, surely," she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her
+eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. "Did you
+come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur
+John?"
+
+"There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my
+leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information
+of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any
+case--wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse."
+
+"To tell me this?"
+
+"To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall
+be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick."
+
+"I mind them not; I had forgotten them," she said.
+
+"But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me,
+Margery?"
+
+"For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?"
+
+"I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?"
+
+"Did I not say I had forgotten it?"
+
+"Thank you," I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one
+thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful
+thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I
+have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your
+dressing-room--"
+
+She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.
+
+"Spare me, sir," she begged. "There are some things that must always be
+unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you
+to know--that I know--how--how you came there--"
+
+She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But
+having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into
+words.
+
+"Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What
+could he hope to gain by such a thing?"
+
+I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue.
+For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert
+Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave
+the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's
+dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing
+begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit,
+I made haste to efface the question I had asked.
+
+"Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out
+of sight. But to the other--the matter which has brought me hither; will
+you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?"
+
+We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers,
+warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our
+poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke
+quickly.
+
+"You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not
+linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward--Oh,
+heavens! what have I said!"
+
+"Nothing," I cut in swiftly; "you are speaking now to your husband--not
+to the spy. Go on, if you please."
+
+"We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you
+are still--if you desire it, you may meet the good _cure_, and--"
+
+A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim
+her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step
+below, I whispered: "I shall keep the tryst--my first and last with you,
+dear lady. Adieu."
+
+So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I
+feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He
+was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again,
+through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed
+with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of
+the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking
+this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, when she had found me out.
+
+"'Tis the worst that could happen," she whispered. "You are discovered,
+both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be
+known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and
+now--Hark! what is that?"
+
+We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or
+two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on
+greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.
+
+I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come
+to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find
+Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was
+not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in
+here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it
+to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain
+for Dick.
+
+"Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!" Her voice was
+tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in
+spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.
+
+But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that
+Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you,
+my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another
+slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in
+guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning
+was not needed.
+
+Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. "That man! Oh,
+Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we
+are not finding Dick--we _must_ find him quickly!"
+
+There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the
+door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the
+way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not
+before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the
+chance offered, I bent to whisper.
+
+"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may
+not pass the door, as you have seen."
+
+"He will not escape without you," she demurred.
+
+"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"
+
+She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think
+of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.
+
+"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.
+
+I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely
+duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"
+
+She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the
+ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn.
+Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were
+summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the
+casement.
+
+Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing
+restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of
+the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not
+guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying
+venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of
+British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.
+
+'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name
+whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and
+the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my
+window.
+
+"'Tis I--Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the
+casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's
+sake!"
+
+"I am fair trapped," I whispered back. "Make off as you can."
+
+"And leave you behind?" So much I heard; and then came sounds of a
+struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold,
+a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed
+by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The
+edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the
+casement a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.
+
+"In the name of the king!" he said; and this was all he had time or
+leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of
+his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil
+of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and
+clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for
+yourselves.
+
+The alighting ground of the leap was the body of Dick's late antagonist
+lying prone beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and
+ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.
+
+"'Tis legs for it now," he cried. "Make for the avenue and the horses at
+the hitch-rail!"
+
+At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may
+still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So
+when we had darted through the thin line of encircling horsemen and were
+flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight
+of us thundering at our heels, Dick was the pace-setter, whilst I made
+but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in
+the effort to catch my second wind.
+
+"Courage!" shouted Dick, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he
+ran. "There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!"
+
+But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the
+box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the
+border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that
+I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:
+
+"Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now,
+then; give it to 'em hot _and_ heavy!"
+
+A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some
+confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail,
+and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.
+
+Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the
+avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse
+he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward
+road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in
+full cry behind us.
+
+'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a
+by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that
+were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who
+had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.
+
+The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.
+
+"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd
+say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off
+one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if
+so be ye blow it fierce enough."
+
+"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," Dick explained. "I had an inkling of
+what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped
+from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his
+one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."
+
+"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with
+never a word to take back to Dan Morgan--unless you have the word."
+
+"Not I," Dick said, ruefully.
+
+The old man chuckled again.
+
+"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right
+old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel
+Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part
+o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp
+to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis'll
+foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN
+
+
+In that book he wrote--the book in which he never so much as names the
+name of Ireton--my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles
+Stedman, damns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his
+ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the
+failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the
+South.
+
+Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre
+Tarleton,--they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a
+major-general's sword-knot,--'tis but the part of outspoken honest
+enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness
+on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the
+most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord
+Cornwallis's field officers.
+
+No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy.
+'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and
+won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.
+
+In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's
+and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements
+fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with
+his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers
+exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired
+for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within
+scouting distance of us.
+
+Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at
+the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and
+John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper
+into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by
+this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell
+back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post
+on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.
+
+For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland
+line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were
+posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A
+hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open
+pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians
+and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and
+every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.
+
+Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of
+outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the
+Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted
+well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own
+colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.
+
+'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the
+enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was
+better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we
+all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us
+to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the
+harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim
+low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure
+killing distance.
+
+"'Tis a brave old Daniel," said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the
+air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. "'Twill not be his fault
+if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack;
+what think you of our chances?"
+
+I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the
+British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to
+anybody's anvil.
+
+"Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact," said I. "We have
+Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first,
+and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good
+account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them
+leg-stiff to overtake us."
+
+Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan
+Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.
+
+"I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with
+a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can
+take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day
+last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of
+misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a
+look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?"
+
+The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless
+branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful
+setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war
+portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with
+the lad's when I gave him his answer.
+
+"Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no
+other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go
+hand in hand with repentance and confession--"
+
+"No, no;" he cut in quickly. "Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may
+be all too late--for me. Does she love you?--has she said she loves
+you?"
+
+"Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the
+chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the
+honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that
+content you?"
+
+At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the
+dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.
+
+"With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you,
+Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me
+the burying trench." And then he added softly: "God bless her!"
+
+I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on
+to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of
+galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers,
+one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to
+reconnoitre us most coolly.
+
+I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his
+borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous
+cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to
+cover.
+
+Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. "The
+fumblers!" he raged. "'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all
+missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"
+
+"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and,
+truly, the chance did not tarry.
+
+From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming
+under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon
+were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.
+
+'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the
+opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the
+volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun
+was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level
+rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of
+red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.
+
+"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of
+that--"
+
+But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing
+as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the
+onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the
+militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's
+were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting
+line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.
+
+"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore
+when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave
+of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a
+hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around
+the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.
+
+But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half
+prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood
+firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
+But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the
+iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way
+backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.
+
+"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a
+second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall
+we never get into it?"
+
+'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first
+company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a
+rout. The order was misunderstood,--'twas received at the precise moment
+of the upcoming of the British reserves,--and the Marylanders fell back.
+In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of
+the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the
+horses.
+
+At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing
+the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in
+the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy,
+sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give the _coup de
+grace_, he gave the quick command: "About face! Fire! Charge!"
+
+I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length
+range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw
+the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the
+recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. "Charge them,
+lads! they're sabering the Georgians!"
+
+A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was
+at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went,
+with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the
+troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other
+curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages--the heavy
+dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled
+from catapults.
+
+'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless
+confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this
+brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler--figuring in the
+histories as an unnamed sergeant--had his share.
+
+It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton--a true Briton
+in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the
+retreat--was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons.
+Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great
+clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three
+horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel
+Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler,
+and my own mount.
+
+When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and
+was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer
+the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man
+nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front
+whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut
+him down.
+
+'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the
+unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor
+the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled
+his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellow _sabreur_ drop his
+weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long
+enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of
+his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were
+now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain
+our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a
+savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found
+his antagonist's sword hand.
+
+At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,--it hangs now over the
+chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,--gave the
+signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse,
+wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from
+his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so
+we did not come off scatheless.
+
+This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a
+little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no
+serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down
+the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to
+the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.
+
+The battle fought and won,--'twas over and done with two full hours
+before noon,--Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the
+swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away,
+and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on
+Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little
+army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest
+running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before
+Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.
+
+Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the
+victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the
+warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it,
+burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready
+for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.
+
+'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our
+cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the
+cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of
+the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed
+to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and
+stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's
+outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we
+saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the
+main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary,
+mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the
+hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.
+
+Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I
+promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions.
+Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the
+general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to
+Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in
+which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with
+Morgan at the upper fords.
+
+Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in
+the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of
+January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and
+found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners,
+and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank
+of the stream.
+
+Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel.
+'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us
+leave to rest.
+
+"You have had weary work of it, I doubt not, gentlemen," he would say.
+"Your time is your own until General Greene sets us in order for what he
+has in mind to do."
+
+I looked at Dick, and he looked at me.
+
+"May we count upon twenty-four hours, think you, Colonel?" I asked.
+
+"Safely, I should say."
+
+"Then I shall ask leave of absence for Captain Jennifer and myself till
+this time to-morrow," I went on. "This is our home neighborhood, as you
+know, and we have a little matter of private business which may be
+despatched in a day."
+
+"Will this business take you without the lines?"
+
+"That is as it may be, sir. I do not know the bounds of the outposting."
+
+The colonel wrote us passes to come and go at will past the sentries,
+and I drew Dick away.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" he asked, when we were by ourselves.
+
+"'Tis the fulfilling of my promise to you, Richard. Get your horse and
+we will ride together."
+
+"But whither?" he queried.
+
+"To Appleby Hundred--and Mistress Margery."
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+HOW WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY HUNDRED
+
+
+'Twas late in the afternoon of the last day of January when we set out
+together, Jennifer and I, from the camp of conference at Sherrard's
+Ford.
+
+The military situation, lately so critical for us, had reached and
+passed one of its many subclimaxes. Morgan's little army, with its
+prisoners still safe in hand, was on its way northward to
+Charlottesville in Virginia, and only the officers remained behind to
+confer with General Greene.
+
+For the others, Huger and Williams were hurrying up from Cheraw to meet
+the general at Salisbury; and General Davidson, with a regiment of North
+Carolina volunteers, was set to keep the fords of the Catawba.
+
+As for the British commander's intendings, we had conflicting reports.
+Two days earlier, Lord Cornwallis had burned his heavy baggage at
+Ramsour's Mill, and so we had assurance that the pursuit was only
+delayed. But whether, when he should break his camp at Forney's
+plantation, he would go northward after Morgan and the prisoners, or
+cross the river at some nearhand ford to chase our main, none of our
+scouts could tell us.
+
+We were guessing at this, Richard and I, as we jogged on together down
+the river road, and were agreed that could my Lord cross the flooded
+river without loss of time, his better chance would be to fall upon our
+main at Salisbury or thereabouts. But as to the possibility of his
+crossing, we fell apart.
+
+"Lacking another drop of rain, we are safe for forty-eight hours yet,"
+Dick would say, pointing to the brimming river rolling its brown flood
+at our right as we fared on. "And with two days' start we shall have him
+burning more than his camp wagons to overtake us."
+
+"Have it so, if you will," said I, to end the argument. "But this I
+know: were Dan Morgan or General Greene, or you or I, in Lord
+Cornwallis's shoes, the two days would not be lost."
+
+Jennifer laughed. "Leave the rest of us out, Sir Hannibal Ireton, and
+tell what you would do," he said, mocking me.
+
+We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had
+sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when
+we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis
+Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I
+pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out
+in gurgling eddies.
+
+"You've been sharp to take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but
+there is one I've not forgot," said I. "One day, about the time you were
+getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a
+company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the
+Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in
+flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see
+that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no more than armpit
+deep."
+
+"So?" said Richard; "then it behooves us to--" He stopped in mid
+sentence, drew rein and shifted his sword hilt to the front.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+For reply he pointed me to a canoe half hidden in the bushes where
+roadside and river-edge came together.
+
+I laughed. "An empty pirogue. Shall we charge and run it through?"
+
+"Hist!" said he; "that canoe was afloat a minute since. Mark the
+paddle--'tis dripping yet."
+
+As he spoke an Indian stood up in the bushes beside the pirogue, holding
+out his empty hands in token of amity. We rode up and were presently
+shaking hands with our old-time ally, the Catawba.
+
+"How!" said he; "heap how! Chief Harris glad; wah! Make think have to go
+to Sal'bury to find Captain Long-knife and Captain Jennif'. Heap much
+glad!"
+
+"Chief Harris?" I queried. "Who may he be?"
+
+The Catawba drew himself up and drummed upon his breast.
+
+"Chief Harris here," he answered, proudly. "The Great War Chief," by
+which we understood he meant General Greene, "say all Catawba take
+war-path 'gainst redcoat; make Uncanoola headman; give um new name.
+Wah!"
+
+At this we shook hands with him again, well pleased that our stanch ally
+should have recognition at the hands of the general. Then I would ask if
+he were on the way to raise his tribesmen to fight with us.
+
+"Bimeby; no have time now; big thing over yonder," pointing across the
+river. "Manitou Cornwally fool Great War Chief, mebbe, hey?"
+
+"How is that?" said Dick; and the query elicited a bit of news to make
+us prick our ears. The Catawba had been in the British camp at Forney's,
+posturing again as a Cherokee friendly to the king's side. Some sudden
+movement had been determined upon, though what it was to be he could not
+learn. At the end of his own resources he had crossed the river in a
+stolen pirogue to find and warn us.
+
+"What say you, Dick?" I asked, when we had heard the Catawba through.
+
+The lad was holding his lip in his hand and scowling as one who pits
+duty against inclination.
+
+"'Tis our cursed luck!" he gloomed. Then he swore it out by length and
+breadth, and, when the air was cleared, let me have what was in his
+mind.
+
+"After all, 'tis like enough we should find Appleby house deserted.
+Gilbert Stair will cling to Lord Cornwallis's coat-skirt as long as he
+can for sheer safety's sake. At all events, our business must wait; the
+country's weal comes first." Then to the Indian: "If we can make the
+beasts take the water, will you ferry us across, Chief?"
+
+The Catawba nodded, and made the nod good by setting us dry-shod on the
+farther bank of the brown flood. By the time we had the horses rubbed
+down and resaddled 'twas twilight in the open and night dark in the
+wood; but we were on our own ground and knew every by-path through the
+forest.
+
+So, when we had sent the Indian back to carry news of us to General
+Davidson at the lower ford, and to advertise him of our purpose, we
+mounted to begin a scouting jaunt, keeping to the wood paths and bearing
+cautiously northward toward the enemy's camp at Forney's plantation.
+
+At times we were close upon the British sentries, with every nerve
+strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours
+through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with
+the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as
+noiseless as a cat's.
+
+None the less, in the fullness of time--'twas near about midnight as we
+guessed it--we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines
+of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon
+there was the stir of an army making ready for the march.
+
+"Which way will it be, north or south?" whispered Dick, when we had
+dismounted to cloak the heads of the horses.
+
+"We shall know shortly," said I; and truly, we did, being well-nigh
+enveloped and ridden down by the fringe of light-horse deploying to
+pioneer the way. When we had sheered off to let this skirmish cloud blow
+by, Dick struck a spark into his tinder-box to have a sight of his
+compass needle.
+
+"South and by east," he announced; "that will mean Beattie's Ford, I
+take it."
+
+"Not unless they swim, horse and foot," I objected. "'Twill be
+Macgowan's, more likely."
+
+Having this uncertainty to resolve, we must hang upon the skirts of the
+British advance till we could make sure, and this proved to be a most
+perilous business. Yet by riding abreast of the moving main we did
+resolve the uncertainty; heard the orders passed from man to man, and
+later saw a small feinting detachment split off to take the road for
+Beattie's, whilst the main body held on for Macgowan's; all this before
+we were discovered in the gloaming of the dawn by some of Tarleton's
+men.
+
+Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to
+take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our
+wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close
+upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat
+riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's
+heels.
+
+'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand.
+We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and
+lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should
+have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the
+missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on
+the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes.
+
+After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol
+bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air.
+Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther
+bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across
+in time to give the alarum.
+
+As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river
+when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned
+out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the
+river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there
+were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to
+dispute the passage of an army.
+
+What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February
+first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not
+any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of
+patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one
+outnumbering host in check.
+
+'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by
+the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding
+shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on
+the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for
+swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and
+always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not
+blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of
+bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and
+the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy
+squarely.
+
+Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire;
+and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that
+back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading
+redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke
+here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a
+battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.
+
+Having no firearms save our wetted pistols, Jennifer and I crouched in
+cover, waiting to do what two swordsmen might when the blade's length
+should bridge the fast-narrowing distance between us and the advancing
+host.
+
+'Twas in this little interval of forced inaction that we heard a most
+familiar voice issuing from a clump of holly just below our covert; a
+voice lifted now in fervent prayer and again in Scriptural anathema on
+the foe.
+
+"'Let God arise and let His inimies be scattered.... Let them be as the
+chaff upon a threshing-floor'--"
+
+The sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle filled the momentary pause,
+and a British officer in a colonel's uniform swayed drunkenly in his
+saddle and plunged headlong in the stream.
+
+"'Let them be as the children of Amalek before the Mighty One of Israel:
+make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, make all their
+princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna.... O my God, make them like unto a
+wheel, and as the stubble before the wind; like as the fire that burneth
+up the wood, and as the flame that consumeth the mountains.'"
+
+Crack! went the long-barreled piece again, and again an officer
+hallooing on his floundering battalion bent to his saddle horn and
+slipped into the turbid flood.
+
+My gorge rose. This picking off of officers has always seemed to me the
+savagest of war's barbarities. How Richard divined my thought and
+purpose, I know not; but when I would have slipped down to Yeates's
+holly bush he laid a detaining hand on my arm.
+
+"Let be," he said; "'tis murder, if you like, but all war is that. When
+old Eph's turn comes, they will kill him as relentlessly as he is
+killing them."
+
+By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the
+shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham's men,
+and the king's muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by
+platoon and volley fire. Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view
+of the situation.
+
+"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "'tis high time Joe Graham was getting
+his lads in order for a foot race. Once those fellows come ashore
+they'll play hare and hounds with us to the king's taste. Keep your eye
+on the nags, Jack. It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a
+belated retreat."
+
+We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be
+out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank. As I looked to make
+sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of
+hoofs on the Appleby road. I made sure this would be General Davidson
+bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late.
+O'Hara's men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying
+his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree
+fringe sing with musket balls.
+
+"'Tis our cue to run away!" Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet. "To
+the horses!"
+
+But now we were too late. Davidson's men were between us and the scrub
+oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.
+
+Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a
+tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now
+dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift
+parrying musket-balls.
+
+What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering
+heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered
+Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the
+retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst
+he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the
+galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after
+them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.
+
+"Up with you and out of this!" cried Jennifer, setting me the example.
+"We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!"
+
+But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his
+holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting
+his terrible imprecations on the enemy.
+
+Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old
+man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to
+his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain
+regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer
+shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself,
+cheering his men on to the attack.
+
+We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire,
+the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British
+commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the
+entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.
+
+The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath. "Dad blast ye for a pair
+of aim-sp'ilin'--"
+
+A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote
+through the branches overhead. A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I
+stooped to recover it. When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man
+tightly in his arms. Yeates's belt was cut, and a little oozing
+well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.
+
+"Ease me down, Cap'n Dick; ease me down. The old man's done for, this
+time, ez I allow--spang in the innards. Ease me down and get off for
+yerselves, if so be ye can, im--me--jit--"
+
+The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless.
+Dick's oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who
+said: "Come on--the living before the dead!" and so we made the
+well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.
+
+How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must
+figure for yourselves, if you can. The men of the British vanguard were
+all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no
+one of them raised a hand to stay us. I have thought since that mayhap
+they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above
+wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead. Be that as it may, we rode away
+unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain's slashings, and I
+in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house
+because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we
+were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.
+
+But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in true _ritter_ fashion;
+and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said:
+
+"Now we are well out of that, what next? We can not go to Margery with
+the whole British army at our heels."
+
+"Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour," I asserted. Then, as
+once before, I gave him my best bow. "For the last time, it may be, let
+me play the lord of the manor. You are very welcome to my father's
+demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings."
+
+"All?" said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by
+side.
+
+"Yes, all," said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the
+lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my
+father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.
+
+"Then you do not love Madge more?" he queried, his eye kindling.
+
+"Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have
+the house and all its holdings."
+
+We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert
+Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed
+blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and
+when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad
+turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.
+
+"You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!" he said. "She
+is not here."
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+IN WHICH A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE
+
+
+What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new
+tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were
+spared the knowing. For when he said, "She is not here," two happenings
+intervened to give us both other things to think of.
+
+The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a
+troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the
+swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and
+bowing behind it.
+
+Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing
+more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the
+avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted
+things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an
+ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing
+without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.
+
+It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.
+
+"The horses!--we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring
+his bell and tell the redcoats we are here," he would say; and before I
+knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling
+softly to the big gray.
+
+Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came
+obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when
+the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair
+of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.
+
+"So far, so good," quoth Dick. Then to the old black, who had stood by,
+saucer-eyed and speechless, the while: "Anthony, do you be as big a
+numbskull as you were born to be, and hold these redcoat gentlemen in
+palaver till we can win out at the back."
+
+The old majordomo nodded his good-will, but now my slow wit came in
+play. "We've done it now," said I. "The horses will go out as they came
+in, or not at all. Had you forgotten the stair at the back?"
+
+Judge for yourselves, my dears, if this were the time, place or crisis
+for a man to fling himself upon the hall settle, grip his ribs and laugh
+like any lack-wit. Yet this is what Richard Jennifer did.
+
+It was in the very midst of his gust of ill-timed merriment, while the
+horses were nosing niftily at their strange surroundings, and the
+hoof-strokes of the redcoat troop could be plainly heard on the gravel
+of the avenue, that I chanced to lift my eyes to the stair. There,
+looking down upon us with speechless astoundment in the blue-gray eyes,
+stood our dear lady.
+
+Another instant and she was with us, stamping her foot and crying: "_Mon
+Dieu!_ what is this? Are you gone mad, both of you?"
+
+Dick's answer was another burst of laughter, loud enough, you would
+think, to be heard by those beyond the door.
+
+"Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge--two horses and two
+asses," he said. And then to old Anthony: "Open the door, Tony, and
+invite the gentlemen in."
+
+But Margery was before him. Ah, my dears, a man's wit is like a
+matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder
+whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a
+woman's is like the spark in a tinder-box--a quick snip of flint and
+steel and you have your fire. In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy
+curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to
+the rear.
+
+"Quick!" she cried; "lead them gently, for the love of heaven!"
+
+She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand,
+rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the
+time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep
+within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses
+by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of
+ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.
+
+Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady.
+Calling Dick to help her--in all the fierce haste of it I marked that
+she called to Dick and not to me--she unlocked and opened the door to
+the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were
+safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed
+behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could
+see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.
+
+Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.
+
+"Lord!" said he; "did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your
+adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!"
+
+I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a
+soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is
+slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another
+and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my
+heart, at least.
+
+The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on
+the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall,
+and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release
+or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or
+encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found
+the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and
+took a survey of our jail.
+
+'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such
+an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly
+believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this
+stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room
+for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.
+
+Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly
+depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one
+of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.
+
+"There is no lack of potables," says my candle-bearer; "but, unhappily,
+there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the
+horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good
+feeding of oats."
+
+"Truly," said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from
+the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks
+which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the
+sorrel or the gray was foaled.
+
+Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while
+before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.
+
+"'Tis Madge," said Dick, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and
+'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.
+
+What passed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the
+door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go
+abroad.
+
+Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better
+part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well,
+and more candles.
+
+"We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far," he said.
+"Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs
+pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge
+can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted
+stiff for our sakes."
+
+This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of
+it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at
+Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say
+no word to Richard.
+
+So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the
+horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle
+coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no
+more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving
+them a drink.
+
+When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the
+silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking
+in low tones to match the place and circumstance; and I do think in
+those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the
+outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.
+
+And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm
+came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the muffled
+rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor
+hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.
+
+I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There
+was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we
+knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of
+reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we
+two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid
+to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms,
+Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I
+learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have
+hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.
+
+From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things
+more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon
+the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.
+
+"'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack," he would
+say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.
+
+"No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to."
+
+"Yet you said once--in that black night when I went mad and would have
+killed you--that your life lay between Madge and me."
+
+"So it did--and does. And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I
+have worn that life upon my sleeve."
+
+"Nay," he said, very gently; "you need not go so high for a witness;
+have I not seen?"
+
+We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our
+dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and
+won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my
+brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful
+night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a
+friend--nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter
+hatred.
+
+He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see
+him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for
+satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the
+guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip
+that was not of anger.
+
+"Dear God," said he; "'tis I who stand in the way."
+
+"No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not
+so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell
+you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the
+incomplete marriage--'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the
+Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to
+see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by
+her own appointment to meet him in her father's house."
+
+He shook his head slowly. "You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do
+think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves--not me."
+
+I could afford to smile at that.
+
+"If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not
+love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad."
+
+But he would only shake his head again.
+
+"'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks
+in the glade."
+
+"'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike," said I.
+
+"But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess."
+
+"Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to
+tell me."
+
+"None the less--ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never
+have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been
+something warmer than hatred in her heart."
+
+"'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there
+been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as
+the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western
+mountains? She never spoke a word to me, Dick, in all those weeks."
+
+"Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her
+to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as
+she should be, and you are blunter than I--which is the worst I could
+say of you."
+
+"No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of
+the marriage is of her own proposing--at least, I should say I only
+hinted at it."
+
+"There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that
+you love her, Jack?"
+
+"Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I
+have confessed, but this one thing I have not done."
+
+"Well," said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by
+word, "what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you
+have made her that bitterest thing in all the world--a woman scorned?"
+
+I would not listen to him more.
+
+"This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond
+the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the
+Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the
+burning?"
+
+"I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help."
+
+"Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she
+wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, Dick,
+but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me."
+
+He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth
+under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my
+hand most lovingly, saying, "Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such
+a price?"
+
+"Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the
+matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if
+you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our
+necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose."
+
+"Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the
+gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own
+trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say;
+yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove
+it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have
+that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before
+we three go apart again."
+
+I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.
+
+"As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have
+drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young
+man brews for him. But if the priest--"
+
+Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most
+singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from
+all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding
+flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole
+cellar with its vivid glare.
+
+"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did
+that come from?"
+
+I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was,
+or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the
+farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the
+great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the
+night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when
+another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place
+in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.
+
+The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and
+framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity
+peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert
+Stair's lawyer-factor.
+
+In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash
+and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in
+place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so
+far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.
+
+"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.
+
+"'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head,"
+said I. "He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging."
+
+"'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?"
+
+"I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as
+ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm."
+
+"Oho!" said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I
+could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. "They can hang me
+when I am too dead to cut and thrust more--not sooner."
+
+I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the
+horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade--one of our captures at the Cowpens;
+and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.
+
+"Never mind," said I; "give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play
+it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough."
+
+He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me
+as if I had said something moving. "You are every inch a soldier, Jack;
+you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be." And
+he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.
+
+Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of
+our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that
+its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited
+till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like
+frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the
+bolt shot back.
+
+But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or
+timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the
+ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.
+
+"Come!" she panted; "come quickly--there is not an instant to spare.
+The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the
+dragoons!"
+
+I cut in swiftly. "He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?"
+
+She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the
+other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness
+to have us out and away.
+
+"No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the
+order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang
+without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were
+his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?"
+
+Richard gave a low whistle.
+
+"So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with
+us," he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. "Your
+father?" I gasped. "And he sent you to save me?"
+
+"Surely," she said. "Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?"
+Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the
+poorest, I could see her eyes flash. "Will you squander the last moment
+in silly questions?" she burst out. "Come, I say!"
+
+I smiled. "Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep
+the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this."
+
+She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to
+my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword
+to be my own good blade of proof--the ancient Ferara willed me by my
+father.
+
+Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then
+and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord
+Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events
+suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious
+footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry
+above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.
+
+"Too late!" said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind
+the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me
+to follow.
+
+We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us,
+when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping
+through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin--alone.
+
+What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man
+will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I
+guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper
+person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the
+trap were still safe shut and secure.
+
+'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the
+wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to
+run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of
+those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and
+swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress
+Margery when he should have her in his power.
+
+A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing
+theme--ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's
+design to marry my widow and the estate--and I do think the lad would
+have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off
+suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing
+into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but
+squeak at him.
+
+He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.
+
+"By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would
+have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering
+old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this
+devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would
+be a rare jest--to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed,
+slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked
+lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this."
+
+He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and
+craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and
+he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the "dead man" from the
+wick. At that we heard him muttering again.
+
+"'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by
+that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel,
+and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress
+Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door.
+But now he's gone--vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that
+damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose
+at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!"
+
+The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the
+cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little
+window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges,
+and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of
+the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw
+him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop
+down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when
+he discovered me.
+
+To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the
+still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes,
+searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange
+halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery
+we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light
+came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover
+of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in
+where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.
+
+"So-ho!" said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis
+you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap
+you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up
+with you and come along."
+
+All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling
+frenzy-fit of protestation.
+
+"Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir--a devil's own trap! I--I am not
+the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I--hands off, you cursed villains,
+or I'll have the law on you!" this last when one of the men cast the
+noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides
+in the looping of another cord. "By God! you shall all smart for this;
+all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend
+in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who--"
+
+A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and
+Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched
+him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was
+rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and
+bidding his men make haste.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+HOW RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID
+
+
+For some breathless moments after we three were left alone in the
+Stygian darkness of the wine cellar, no word was spoken. The rolling of
+the thunder drum was muffled now, as it were booming out the dirge of
+the man who had digged a pit and had himself fallen therein; and the
+lightning flashes coming at longer intervals served but to intensify the
+gloom they lit up for the instant.
+
+It was a minced oath from Richard that first broke the spell that bound
+us.
+
+"'Twas too much for Madge," said he, "she has fainted. Swing the door,
+and light another candle."
+
+I did both as quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor,
+stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by
+all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches to bring her to.
+
+"Water!" said Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with
+wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you.
+For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be
+cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the drenching doctor with the
+wine.
+
+"Lord!" cried Dick, the sweat standing out upon his face in great drops;
+"this is terrible! What shall we do?"
+
+"Jeanne will know what to do," I asserted. "We must get her out of this
+and up to her chamber."
+
+Richard started to his feet and stooped to gather the dear body of her
+in his arms. But in the act he paused and straightened himself to look
+fixedly at me.
+
+"Do you take her, Jack; she is--she is--your wife."
+
+"Nay," said I, drawing back. "You are her own true lover; and could she
+choose her bearer--"
+
+"A murrain on your finickings!" he burst out. "She may die whilst we are
+haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and
+begone!"
+
+"But bethink you, Dick," I urged; "if you are taken, you have one chance
+in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a
+spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it."
+
+Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could
+twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's
+eyes flashed and his lip curled.
+
+"Overlook it in me, if you can," he said, with fine scorn. "I had not
+thought upon the peril of it." And with that he took her in his arms as
+she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But
+on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. "Once more,
+your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me
+precedence. Can you trust me with her?"
+
+"Aye, dear lad; now and ever," said I; and so I pushed him out.
+
+After he was gone I made shift to lead the horses through the narrow
+passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point
+them toward the stables.
+
+This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was
+that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the
+wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that
+despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe.
+But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of
+impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and
+thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be
+set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate
+had plunged me.
+
+'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the
+persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my
+sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of
+the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to
+dispel.
+
+And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with
+lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword
+and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the
+conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril
+more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and
+when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the
+hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird
+his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and
+fortitude as his creed hath taught him.
+
+To such a faring through all the days and nights of this grim desert of
+a future these lonely hours in the wine vault were a fitting vigil, as I
+conceived; and when I had hugged my misery close, and a sort of
+monstrous self-pity had come to make a seeming virtue of the hard
+necessity, I was best pleased to be alone. In such a frame of mind the
+sound of footsteps in the out-cellar, warning me that more company was
+coming, sent a wave of sullen anger to submerge me, and I do think 'twas
+in me to turn my back upon a friend who should come to tell me I was
+free to go at large.
+
+Since I had led forth the good horses the great oaken door had stood
+ajar. So I wondered why my visitor made so much ado rattling the key in
+the lock. Then it came to me suddenly that the noise and delay were
+meant to give me timely warning; and at the scent of threatening
+peril--a peril I might cope with and grapple soldierwise--I became a man
+again. A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its
+barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly
+behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.
+
+Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me
+more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her
+best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like
+stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at
+that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her
+candle held high to light the inner gloom.
+
+"This way, Scipio," she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out
+the madeira bin. "We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the
+Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting." Wherewith she stood aside
+to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.
+
+At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were
+about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup.
+Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come
+herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her
+word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my
+prisonment was near an end.
+
+I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many
+wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth
+and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon
+his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around
+before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.
+
+But whilst I hesitated I saw her start back with a little cry of terror.
+Standing in the arched doorway through which the mulatto had but now
+passed was a man cloaked, hatted, booted and spurred as for the road. At
+her cry he doffed his hat and ...
+
+My dears, I shall never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask
+this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid
+in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire
+had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the
+skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face.
+Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of
+this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet.
+
+And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he
+laughed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness. "You are
+surprised, Mistress Margery; you heard my Lord's order and thought I
+would be by now some miles on the road to Salisbury?"
+
+"If you were the loyal soldier you should be, sir," she said, drawing
+herself up proudly, "you would be at the head of your troop, as his
+Lordship directed." And then, with a gesture that was most queenly:
+"Stand aside, Sir--Libertine, and let me pass."
+
+His answer was another mocking laugh, and he stepped within to close
+the door and lock it. When he turned to front her again his face was the
+face of a tormented devil.
+
+"By God! you think too lightly of me, Mistress Margery. Before ever this
+day dawned I owed you much, but like a spiteful little hellicat you must
+needs add to the score by making me a target for your wit at the
+supper-table. 'Twill cost a life to more than one of them who laughed
+with you, my lady, but 'twill cost you dearer still."
+
+He came nearer as he spoke, thrusting that horrible face farther into
+the circle of candle-light; but she would not draw back nor flinch a
+hair, and I marked that the hand that held the candlestick was as steady
+as a rock. But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her
+shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning
+upon me.
+
+"Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?" she said.
+
+"No!" he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once,
+and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it
+into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in
+her face. "The thing they'll find here in the morning--"
+
+He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his
+back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between
+his ribs. But my dear lady would not have it so.
+
+"No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!" she cried;
+and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she
+became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.
+
+But now my blood was up. "You are my wife," I said, coldly. "If he had a
+dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you."
+
+"But not that way--oh, not that way, I do beseech you!" she begged.
+"Think of what it will mean to you--and--and to me. For your own sake,
+Monsieur John."
+
+I took my heel from the man's back.
+
+"Your wish is law to me, dear lady. But your way is clear now; you may
+go."
+
+She took a step toward the door.
+
+"You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?"
+
+"By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish
+it, he shall die like one."
+
+I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let
+him have his chance to die sword in hand.
+
+"Remember, I have your promise," she said, turning to go. "The army is
+on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be
+here to--"
+
+The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror. Watching his
+chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge,
+not at me, but at her.
+
+Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that
+it was life for one of us and death for the other. I looked to see my
+lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast
+as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted
+the grim vault for the duel.
+
+As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this
+thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman's chance I had promised to
+give him. But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying
+by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure
+holding the candle aloft. As I have often said, he was a pretty
+swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of
+the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword
+play was most masterly.
+
+Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara's
+point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German
+long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have
+passed through him. After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I
+supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm
+could outweary his. Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant;
+and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce
+eyes glinting like a basilisk's, with no sign in them that my time was
+come to press him home.
+
+None the less, I did press him, inch by inch, driving him at each new
+clash of the steel a little deeper into the gloom that crowded close
+upon the narrow circle of candle-light. He saw my object--to push him to
+unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness--and
+he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I
+had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life
+and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold.
+
+Here the end came quickly. Being entangled among the broached butts he
+had no room to play skilfully. So presently it chanced that he caught
+his point in the chine of a cask and his blade snapped short at the
+hilt. With a yelling oath, hissing hot from the devil's thumb-book, he
+snatched up the broken blade to fling and stick it javelin-wise in my
+shoulder; and then I saw the dull gleam of the candle-light on the
+barrel of a pistol.
+
+Had he aimed the pistol at me, I trust I should still have given him his
+gentleman's chance. But when I saw him level the weapon at my dear lady
+... they came in one and the same heart-beat; the sword-thrust that
+found his life and took it; the crash of the pistol-shot echoing like a
+clap of thunder in the close vault, and pitchy darkness to draw its
+curtain over all.
+
+I know not how I reached her, pulling the broken sword-blade from my
+shoulder as I ran; nor can I tell you how an upgushing spring of
+thankfulness choked me when I found her unharmed by the bullet which had
+snuffed the candle out.
+
+She was in a most piteous state, now it was all over; and though I
+charged it all where I supposed it should belong--to the account of a
+natural womanly passion to cling to something in her moment of
+weakness--yet the blood ran quick in my veins when she suffered me to
+lead her out of that dismal, smoking death-pit, she clinging to me the
+while so close that I could feel the warmth of her and the fluttering of
+her dear heart beneath my hand.
+
+She said no word, nor did I, till we were come above stairs. We found
+the rooms on the main floor deserted by all save the blacks, who were
+clearing away the debris of the feast of leave-taking. In the hall we
+came upon old Anthony, putting on the chain of the outer door. Here my
+lady drew apart from me.
+
+"Is my Lord gone?" she asked.
+
+"Yis, Missa. He say tell yo' he gwine tek it mighty hawd yo' no come ter
+gib him de sti'up-cup."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"Gone to de lib'ry to wait fo' Massa Pengarbin; yis, Missa."
+
+She turned away, shuddering at this mention of the factor for whose
+coming the master would wait long and in vain, and I heard her murmur:
+"Oh, the horror of this night!" But in a moment she came back to me, and
+was her cool, calm self again.
+
+"For that I am here, alive and well, I thank you, Captain Ireton. Need I
+say more?"
+
+I can not tell you what was in the words to make me hot with anger, as I
+had but now been hot with love. But the new wound in my shoulder was
+bleeding freely, and I would not let her see I was hurt; and if aught
+will stanch a wound, 'tis anger.
+
+"You need not say so much," I retorted, bowing low. "You have spoken now
+and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever
+so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as
+you, Mistress Margery."
+
+She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears. I saw what I had done
+and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong
+to the night's whip of scourgings.
+
+When she spoke again it was to say: "This is your own house, Captain
+Ireton; what will you do?"
+
+"One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?"
+
+"He is."
+
+"Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do."
+
+She bent her head in acquiescence.
+
+"You will find the--the person whom you wish to see in your old room in
+the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?"
+
+"No; I can find the way."
+
+My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like
+a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where
+we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.
+
+I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come
+upon me, and drew her arm in mine.
+
+"We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that
+you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu."
+
+And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we
+climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of
+destiny at its farther end.
+
+We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking
+that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron
+brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a
+taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she
+were calling to me across the eternal abysses. "Monsieur John!--you are
+hurt!" And then, from a still remoter distance: "Oh, Father
+Matthieu--Dick! come quickly! He is dying!"
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT
+
+
+Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow
+land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not
+recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer
+filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?
+
+For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of
+the night are shuttled into the warp of life. But presently comes the
+master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid
+the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to
+mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the
+shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness
+regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, "Dear
+God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!"
+
+Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or
+its number in the calendar.
+
+I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored
+soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney
+piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner;
+the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had
+rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen
+that once--was it yesterday or months ago?--had minded me of my mother.
+
+When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever
+dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I
+was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.
+
+So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, "Dear God,'twas but a
+dream!" and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery
+were sitting where I last remembered her.
+
+She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great
+chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the
+evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.
+
+I sighed, and there was a catching of the breath at the bottom of it.
+Truly, the wondrous dream had had its agonies, but there were also
+beatitudes to tip the scale the other way. For I had dreamed this
+sweet-faced watcher was my wife--in name, at least.
+
+'Twas while I looked, minding not the eye-ache the effort cost, that she
+rose and came softly to the bedside. She said no word, but, as once in
+the dream-time, she laid a cool palm on my forehead. Weak as I was--and
+surely King David was not weaker when he wrote his bones were gone to
+water--the old love-madness of that other day came to thrill me at her
+touch, and I made as if I would take her hand and press it to my lips.
+
+"Nay, sir," she said, with a swift return to sick-room discipline, "you
+must not stir; you have been sorely hurt."
+
+"Aye," said I; "I do remember; 'twas in a duel with one Francis
+Falconnet. He said he would make you his--"
+
+Now the soft palm was laid on my lips, and I kissed it till she snatched
+it away.
+
+"_Ma foi!_" she cried; "I think you are in a hopeful way to recover now,
+Captain Ireton. I do protest I shall go and send old Anthony to sit with
+you."
+
+"Anthony?" said I; "he was in the dream, too, putting up the chain on
+the hall door."
+
+"Ah, _mon Dieu_!" she said softly, as if to herself, "he is wandering
+yet." At which, as if to try to help me: "'Twas no dream; you did see
+him putting on the chain."
+
+"Did I? I made sure I dreamed it. But tell me another thing; was it not
+yesterday that I met Sir Francis Falconnet under the oaks in the wood
+field and got this pair of redhot pincers in my shoulder?"
+
+She turned away, and if I ever saw a tear there was one trembling in her
+eyelashes.
+
+"'Twas three full weeks ago," she said. "And it was not in the wood
+field--'twas in the wine cellar. Never tell me you do not remember; I--I
+could never--ah, Mother of Sorrows! that would be worse than all."
+
+Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least,
+and so I did.
+
+"I remember well enough," I hastened to say. "But being here, and seeing
+you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making
+all the interval stand as a dream. Have I been ailing?"
+
+"You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that
+Doctor Carew has twice given you over."
+
+"No," said I; "there was no fear of that. I am like that man in the old
+German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby
+his chance to die. Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery;
+I have tried him too often."
+
+"Hush!" she said; "'tis an ill thing to jest about. Why should you want
+to die?"
+
+"Rather ask why I should choose to live. But this is beside the mark.
+You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must
+e'en make the best of it."
+
+She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of
+the heart; I knew not what.
+
+"'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, _n'est-ce pas_? And I must not
+let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at
+all--'tis Doctor Carew's order."
+
+So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows;
+and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a
+pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post
+again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell
+asleep.
+
+This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I
+lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better
+part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return
+to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of
+dreams.
+
+By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to
+dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a
+bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I
+awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and
+once--but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and
+drowse in the great chair--I opened my eyes to find that my company was
+the master of the house.
+
+He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted
+candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony
+hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but
+at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin
+legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as
+though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.
+
+"I give ye good even, Captain Ireton," he said, finally, rasping the
+greeting out at me as it had been a curse. "I hope ye've slept well."
+
+I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his
+coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in
+my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.
+
+"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish
+pause.
+
+"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this
+room, Mr. Stair," I would say.
+
+He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good
+care of his own; and I laughed.
+
+"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on
+your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir."
+
+He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed
+to. But his spoken word belied the nods.
+
+"The ways of Providence are inscrutable--something inscrutable, Captain
+Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your
+mercies."
+
+"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier,
+I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the
+field."
+
+"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay
+wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of
+substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country
+than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."
+
+"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise
+which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.
+
+"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some--yourself, for example, and
+the leal land of adoption for others--your humble servant, to wit. I've
+taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to
+know."
+
+At this I must needs laugh outright.
+
+"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"
+
+"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the
+peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
+precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
+Captain Ireton."
+
+Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
+tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.
+
+"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on
+your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
+the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
+'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
+and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
+day at Guilford Court House."
+
+"A victory?" I would ask.
+
+"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
+I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
+they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
+reaving redcoats in these parts."
+
+His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
+telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
+it showed its head.
+
+"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
+ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
+I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
+your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
+land for ye."
+
+"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of
+saying more.
+
+"I have that--every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas
+since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to
+account to ye for every season's crop--when ye'll pay down the bit
+steward's fee."
+
+"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him
+to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this
+accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"
+
+He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the
+gullibility of his customer.
+
+"Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a
+few hundred pounds, more or less--sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,"
+he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it
+was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. "I've brought ye that last
+will and testament ye signed," handing me the parchment. "No doubt
+you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a
+codicil or two."
+
+Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the
+marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: "Let us be frank with each other
+in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter
+between us?"
+
+"She's a jade!" he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But
+he recovered his self-control instantly. "Ye'd no expect a romantic bit
+lassie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old
+dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything,
+I daresay."
+
+"Then I will tell you the plain truth of it," I said. "This marriage was
+never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the
+time; a makeshift to serve a purpose. If you think I would hold your
+daughter to it--"
+
+"Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about! Ye'll never cast the
+poor bit lassie off that way! Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will
+have a word to say to that."
+
+For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected
+that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to.
+Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.
+
+"There is no 'casting off' about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church,
+there is good ground for an appeal to Rome. The marriage as it stands
+is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough
+legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still
+lacking everything of--"
+
+He could not wait to let me finish.
+
+"Lacking, d'ye say?" he rapped out, wrathfully. "And whose fault is
+that, ye cold-blooded stick? Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and
+heels into your own wife's bed-room? And how do you thank me? I'm to
+suppose ye quarrel wi' her like the dour-faced imp o' Sawtan that ye
+are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man
+old enough to be your father!"
+
+'Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it. Yet
+I would not suffer him to bluster me aside.
+
+"It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more
+as you must have known that Mistress Margery's faith was plighted to
+Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pass."
+
+"Did I know it?" he shrilled. "That lang-legged jackanapes of a Dickie
+Jennifer? Light o' love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a
+finger for him."
+
+"You are talking far enough beside the mark now," I retorted. "Your
+daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this
+entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from
+the wars."
+
+"She will, ye say? And what will become o' the braw acres of Appleby
+that gait, I'd like to know? But ye're daft, man; clean daft. Didn't I
+speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode
+away after they had pitten ye to bed? She tell't him flat she loved
+another man."
+
+"Another man?" I echoed. "I--explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair.
+What other man--"
+
+He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of
+cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.
+
+"Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!" he quavered, when all his breath was
+spent upon the bigger malisons. "Has it never come intil your thick
+numbskull that the poor fule lassie is sick wi' love for ye, ye
+dour-faced loon?"
+
+And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I
+heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the
+choice phrases he could lay tongue to.
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END
+
+
+I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade
+did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said
+to the one account--the miser's.
+
+Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but
+indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of
+Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made
+sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of
+substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his
+goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet
+here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into
+rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.
+
+I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit
+for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to
+wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap
+at the door and Mistress Margery entered.
+
+"Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is
+turned?" she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the
+candles in the mantel sconces.
+
+The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the
+chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat
+faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful
+protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?
+
+Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays
+bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a passing gust
+of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my
+moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she
+used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself
+again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her
+to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.
+
+For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.
+
+"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel
+with him."
+
+"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes
+two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to
+give me this," I added, handing her the will.
+
+She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there
+softly to herself.
+
+--"'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife,
+Margery--' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so,
+would you, Monsieur John?"
+
+"'Tis but a form," I would say. "All wives are 'loving' in lawyers'
+speech."
+
+She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the
+moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.
+
+"I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?"
+
+I would not let her pin me down.
+
+"If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear
+lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but
+another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery."
+
+"Not once?"
+
+"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could
+do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth
+and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the
+Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at
+day-dawn in the oak glade?"
+
+She would not answer me direct.
+
+"'Twas I who brought you to that pass," she said, speaking soft and low.
+"But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak
+glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your
+shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have
+followed."
+
+Saying this she fell silent for a space, and when she spoke again she
+was become by some subtle transmutation my trusting little maid of the
+by-gone halcyon-time.
+
+"Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days,
+Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me,
+had I had one?"
+
+I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.
+
+"Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again
+to-night?"
+
+"Try me and see, dear lady."
+
+"Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'" she pouted. "'Twas 'Margery' and
+'Monsieur John' a year agone."
+
+"Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you
+better."
+
+"No," she said; "that is Dick's name for me; and--and it is of Dick that
+I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?"
+
+I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond
+there was between us.
+
+"Truly?" There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of
+the word, but it was gone when she went on.
+
+"Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better.
+Tell me, if you please, must I marry him--when--"
+
+"When you are free to do it?" I finished for her. "Why should you not,
+my dear?"
+
+She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and
+would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.
+
+"You used to say--in that other time--that love should go before a
+marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?"
+
+"You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present.
+But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you--"
+
+She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of
+happy children at play.
+
+"And I?--now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell
+me; do I love him as his mistress should?"
+
+"Nay, surely," said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me,
+"surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since."
+
+"Have I?" she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that
+came straight from her French mother. "Mayhap you overheard me say it,
+Monsieur Eavesdropper?"
+
+"God help me, little one--so I did," said I.
+
+All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like
+an accusing goddess.
+
+"You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have
+dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that
+I had not failed in any wifely duty!"
+
+"The time and circumstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far
+from blaming you, my dear. But let it pass, 'tis enough that I know you
+love him as he loves you."
+
+Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon
+the hassock, laughing merrily.
+
+"O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman's heart! 'Tis you
+should be the lover, instead of Dick. He rides a-courting as he would
+charge a legion on a battle-field. But nothing would ever tempt you to
+be so masterful rough, would it, Monsieur John? You would look deep into
+your sweetheart's eyes and say--Tell me what you would say, _mon ami_?"
+
+Ah, my dears, I hope no one of you will ever be tempted as I was tempted
+then. I forgot my dear lad, forgot honor, forgot everything save that I
+had leave to tell her how I had loved her from the first; how I should
+go on loving her to the end. So for a moment I hung trembling on the
+brink; and then she pushed me over.
+
+"Is this how you would do, Monsieur--Monsieur Ogre?--sit stock still and
+glower at the poor thing as if you were between two minds as to loving
+her or eating her?"
+
+I bent quickly, took her face between my hands and kissed her
+twice--thrice.
+
+"That is what I should do. Now that you have made me what I was not
+before, are you satisfied?"
+
+'Twas long before she gave me a word. And when she spoke it was only to
+say: "Are you not most monstrous ashamed, Monsieur John?"
+
+"No!" said I. "I am but a man, and you have roused that part of me that
+knows neither shame nor remorse. I love you, Mistress Margery; do you
+hear? I have loved you since that day in June when I came back from
+death's door to find you sitting here to bear me company."
+
+She locked her fingers across her knee and would not look at me.
+
+"But by your own showing you should be ashamed, sir," she insisted.
+"What of the dear friend to whom you would give up even the love of your
+mistress?"
+
+"You may flay me as you will; I shall neither flinch nor go back from my
+word. You are mine, and I shall give you up to no man. I know I have not
+your love--shall never have it. Also, I know that I have gained an enemy
+where once I had a loving friend. Richard Jennifer may kill me if he
+please--he shall have the chance to do it; but you are mine and shall be
+whilst I live to claim and hold you."
+
+There was something less than anger in the blue-gray eyes when she let
+me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful
+mockery in them when she said: "Dear heart! how masterful rough you
+have grown, all in a moment, my Lord." And then the beautiful eyes
+filled and she said, "Poor Dick!" in a way to make me suffer all the
+torments of that old myth-king who could never quaff the water that was
+ever rising to his lips.
+
+"Aye, you may love him, if you must and will," I gloomed. "God pity me!
+I know you do love him."
+
+She looked up quickly. "So you have said a dozen times before. Tell me,
+Monsieur Oracle, how do you know it?"
+
+"If I tell you, you will hate me more than you do now."
+
+"That would be hard, indeed," she murmured. "Yet I would hear you say
+it."
+
+"Listen, then: once, when we three were at the very door and threshold
+of death, you wrote the cry of your heart out on a bit of paper for a
+leave-taking and sent it to the man you loved. You said, 'Though you
+must needs believe my love is pledged to your dear friend and mine, 'tis
+yours, and yours alone.' Were not these your very words?"
+
+Her "yes" was but the lightest whisper, but I heard it and went on.
+"That is all, save this; the Indian bearer of your letter blundered and
+gave it me instead of Dick."
+
+She looked me full in the eyes and my soul went all afire. Then she laid
+her cheek against my knee and I heard her dear voice as it had been a
+chime of sweet-toned joy-bells:
+
+"Ah, Monsieur John; how blind this thing called love can make us all.
+Suppose--suppose the Indian did not blunder, dear lord and master of
+me?"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF APPLEBY***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17690.txt or 17690.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/9/17690
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/17690.zip b/17690.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb388dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17690.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..087f429
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #17690 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17690)