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 How came it that the British outpost still remained at Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard well down upon its rear?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.



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.