Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole cellar with its vivid glare.

"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did that come from?"

I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was, or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.

The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert Stair's lawyer-factor.

In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.

"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.

"'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head," said I. "He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging."

"'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?"

"I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm."

"Oho!" said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. "They can hang me when I am too dead to cut and thrust more—not sooner."

I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade—one of our captures at the Cowpens; and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.

"Never mind," said I; "give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough."

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me as if I had said something moving. "You are every inch a soldier, Jack; you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be." And he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.

Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the bolt shot back.

But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.

"Come!" she panted; "come quickly—there is not an instant to spare. The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the dragoons!"

I cut in swiftly. "He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?"

She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness to have us out and away.

"No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?"

Richard gave a low whistle.

"So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with us," he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. "Your father?" I gasped. "And he sent you to save me?"

"Surely," she said. "Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?" Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the poorest, I could see her eyes flash. "Will you squander the last moment in silly questions?" she burst out. "Come, I say!"

I smiled. "Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this."

She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword to be my own good blade of proof—the ancient Ferara willed me by my father.

Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.

"Too late!" said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me to follow.

We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us, when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin—alone.

What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the trap were still safe shut and secure.

'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress Margery when he should have her in his power.

A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing theme—ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's design to marry my widow and the estate—and I do think the lad would have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but squeak at him.

He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.

"By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would be a rare jest—to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed, slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this."

He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the "dead man" from the wick. At that we heard him muttering again.

"'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel, and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door. But now he's gone—vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!"

The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges, and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when he discovered me.

To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes, searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.

"So-ho!" said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up with you and come along."

All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling frenzy-fit of protestation.

"Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir—a devil's own trap! I—I am not the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I—hands off, you cursed villains, or I'll have the law on you!" this last when one of the men cast the noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides in the looping of another cord. "By God! you shall all smart for this; all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who—"

A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and bidding his men make haste.



L

HOW RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID

For some breathless moments after we three were left alone in the Stygian darkness of the wine cellar, no word was spoken. The rolling of the thunder drum was muffled now, as it were booming out the dirge of the man who had digged a pit and had himself fallen therein; and the lightning flashes coming at longer intervals served but to intensify the gloom they lit up for the instant.

It was a minced oath from Richard that first broke the spell that bound us.

"'Twas too much for Madge," said he, "she has fainted. Swing the door, and light another candle."

I did both as quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor, stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches to bring her to.

"Water!" said Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you. For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the drenching doctor with the wine.

"Lord!" cried Dick, the sweat standing out upon his face in great drops; "this is terrible! What shall we do?"

"Jeanne will know what to do," I asserted. "We must get her out of this and up to her chamber."

Richard started to his feet and stooped to gather the dear body of her in his arms. But in the act he paused and straightened himself to look fixedly at me.

"Do you take her, Jack; she is—she is—your wife."

"Nay," said I, drawing back. "You are her own true lover; and could she choose her bearer—"

"A murrain on your finickings!" he burst out. "She may die whilst we are haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and begone!"

"But bethink you, Dick," I urged; "if you are taken, you have one chance in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it."

Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's eyes flashed and his lip curled.

"Overlook it in me, if you can," he said, with fine scorn. "I had not thought upon the peril of it." And with that he took her in his arms as she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. "Once more, your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me precedence. Can you trust me with her?"

"Aye, dear lad; now and ever," said I; and so I pushed him out.

After he was gone I made shift to lead the horses through the narrow passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point them toward the stables.

This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe. But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate had plunged me.

'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to dispel.

And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and fortitude as his creed hath taught him.

To such a faring through all the days and nights of this grim desert of a future these lonely hours in the wine vault were a fitting vigil, as I conceived; and when I had hugged my misery close, and a sort of monstrous self-pity had come to make a seeming virtue of the hard necessity, I was best pleased to be alone. In such a frame of mind the sound of footsteps in the out-cellar, warning me that more company was coming, sent a wave of sullen anger to submerge me, and I do think 'twas in me to turn my back upon a friend who should come to tell me I was free to go at large.

Since I had led forth the good horses the great oaken door had stood ajar. So I wondered why my visitor made so much ado rattling the key in the lock. Then it came to me suddenly that the noise and delay were meant to give me timely warning; and at the scent of threatening peril—a peril I might cope with and grapple soldierwise—I became a man again. A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.

Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her candle held high to light the inner gloom.

"This way, Scipio," she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out the madeira bin. "We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting." Wherewith she stood aside to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.

At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup. Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my prisonment was near an end.

I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.

But whilst I hesitated I saw her start back with a little cry of terror. Standing in the arched doorway through which the mulatto had but now passed was a man cloaked, hatted, booted and spurred as for the road. At her cry he doffed his hat and ...

My dears, I shall never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face. Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet.

And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he laughed.

"Ha!" he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness. "You are surprised, Mistress Margery; you heard my Lord's order and thought I would be by now some miles on the road to Salisbury?"

"If you were the loyal soldier you should be, sir," she said, drawing herself up proudly, "you would be at the head of your troop, as his Lordship directed." And then, with a gesture that was most queenly: "Stand aside, Sir—Libertine, and let me pass."

His answer was another mocking laugh, and he stepped within to close the door and lock it. When he turned to front her again his face was the face of a tormented devil.

"By God! you think too lightly of me, Mistress Margery. Before ever this day dawned I owed you much, but like a spiteful little hellicat you must needs add to the score by making me a target for your wit at the supper-table. 'Twill cost a life to more than one of them who laughed with you, my lady, but 'twill cost you dearer still."

He came nearer as he spoke, thrusting that horrible face farther into the circle of candle-light; but she would not draw back nor flinch a hair, and I marked that the hand that held the candlestick was as steady as a rock. But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning upon me.

"Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?" she said.

"No!" he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once, and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in her face. "The thing they'll find here in the morning—"

He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between his ribs. But my dear lady would not have it so.

"No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!" she cried; and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.

But now my blood was up. "You are my wife," I said, coldly. "If he had a dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you."

"But not that way—oh, not that way, I do beseech you!" she begged. "Think of what it will mean to you—and—and to me. For your own sake, Monsieur John."

I took my heel from the man's back.

"Your wish is law to me, dear lady. But your way is clear now; you may go."

She took a step toward the door.

"You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?"

"By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish it, he shall die like one."

I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let him have his chance to die sword in hand.

"Remember, I have your promise," she said, turning to go. "The army is on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be here to—"

The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror. Watching his chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge, not at me, but at her.

Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that it was life for one of us and death for the other. I looked to see my lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted the grim vault for the duel.

As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman's chance I had promised to give him. But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure holding the candle aloft. As I have often said, he was a pretty swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword play was most masterly.

Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara's point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have passed through him. After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm could outweary his. Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant; and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce eyes glinting like a basilisk's, with no sign in them that my time was come to press him home.

None the less, I did press him, inch by inch, driving him at each new clash of the steel a little deeper into the gloom that crowded close upon the narrow circle of candle-light. He saw my object—to push him to unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness—and he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold.

Here the end came quickly. Being entangled among the broached butts he had no room to play skilfully. So presently it chanced that he caught his point in the chine of a cask and his blade snapped short at the hilt. With a yelling oath, hissing hot from the devil's thumb-book, he snatched up the broken blade to fling and stick it javelin-wise in my shoulder; and then I saw the dull gleam of the candle-light on the barrel of a pistol.

Had he aimed the pistol at me, I trust I should still have given him his gentleman's chance. But when I saw him level the weapon at my dear lady ... they came in one and the same heart-beat; the sword-thrust that found his life and took it; the crash of the pistol-shot echoing like a clap of thunder in the close vault, and pitchy darkness to draw its curtain over all.

I know not how I reached her, pulling the broken sword-blade from my shoulder as I ran; nor can I tell you how an upgushing spring of thankfulness choked me when I found her unharmed by the bullet which had snuffed the candle out.

She was in a most piteous state, now it was all over; and though I charged it all where I supposed it should belong—to the account of a natural womanly passion to cling to something in her moment of weakness—yet the blood ran quick in my veins when she suffered me to lead her out of that dismal, smoking death-pit, she clinging to me the while so close that I could feel the warmth of her and the fluttering of her dear heart beneath my hand.

She said no word, nor did I, till we were come above stairs. We found the rooms on the main floor deserted by all save the blacks, who were clearing away the debris of the feast of leave-taking. In the hall we came upon old Anthony, putting on the chain of the outer door. Here my lady drew apart from me.

"Is my Lord gone?" she asked.

"Yis, Missa. He say tell yo' he gwine tek it mighty hawd yo' no come ter gib him de sti'up-cup."

"And my father?"

"Gone to de lib'ry to wait fo' Massa Pengarbin; yis, Missa."

She turned away, shuddering at this mention of the factor for whose coming the master would wait long and in vain, and I heard her murmur: "Oh, the horror of this night!" But in a moment she came back to me, and was her cool, calm self again.

"For that I am here, alive and well, I thank you, Captain Ireton. Need I say more?"

I can not tell you what was in the words to make me hot with anger, as I had but now been hot with love. But the new wound in my shoulder was bleeding freely, and I would not let her see I was hurt; and if aught will stanch a wound, 'tis anger.

"You need not say so much," I retorted, bowing low. "You have spoken now and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as you, Mistress Margery."

She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears. I saw what I had done and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong to the night's whip of scourgings.

When she spoke again it was to say: "This is your own house, Captain Ireton; what will you do?"

"One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?"

"He is."

"Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do."

She bent her head in acquiescence.

"You will find the—the person whom you wish to see in your old room in the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?"

"No; I can find the way."

My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.

I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come upon me, and drew her arm in mine.

"We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu."

And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of destiny at its farther end.

We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she were calling to me across the eternal abysses. "Monsieur John!—you are hurt!" And then, from a still remoter distance: "Oh, Father Matthieu—Dick! come quickly! He is dying!"



LI

IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT

Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?

For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of the night are shuttled into the warp of life. But presently comes the master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, "Dear God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!"

Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or its number in the calendar.

I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner; the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen that once—was it yesterday or months ago?—had minded me of my mother.

When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.

So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, "Dear God,'twas but a dream!" and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery were sitting where I last remembered her.

She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.

I sighed, and there was a catching of the breath at the bottom of it. Truly, the wondrous dream had had its agonies, but there were also beatitudes to tip the scale the other way. For I had dreamed this sweet-faced watcher was my wife—in name, at least.

'Twas while I looked, minding not the eye-ache the effort cost, that she rose and came softly to the bedside. She said no word, but, as once in the dream-time, she laid a cool palm on my forehead. Weak as I was—and surely King David was not weaker when he wrote his bones were gone to water—the old love-madness of that other day came to thrill me at her touch, and I made as if I would take her hand and press it to my lips.

"Nay, sir," she said, with a swift return to sick-room discipline, "you must not stir; you have been sorely hurt."

"Aye," said I; "I do remember; 'twas in a duel with one Francis Falconnet. He said he would make you his—"

Now the soft palm was laid on my lips, and I kissed it till she snatched it away.

"Ma foi!" she cried; "I think you are in a hopeful way to recover now, Captain Ireton. I do protest I shall go and send old Anthony to sit with you."

"Anthony?" said I; "he was in the dream, too, putting up the chain on the hall door."

"Ah, mon Dieu!" she said softly, as if to herself, "he is wandering yet." At which, as if to try to help me: "'Twas no dream; you did see him putting on the chain."

"Did I? I made sure I dreamed it. But tell me another thing; was it not yesterday that I met Sir Francis Falconnet under the oaks in the wood field and got this pair of redhot pincers in my shoulder?"

She turned away, and if I ever saw a tear there was one trembling in her eyelashes.

"'Twas three full weeks ago," she said. "And it was not in the wood field—'twas in the wine cellar. Never tell me you do not remember; I—I could never—ah, Mother of Sorrows! that would be worse than all."

Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least, and so I did.

"I remember well enough," I hastened to say. "But being here, and seeing you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making all the interval stand as a dream. Have I been ailing?"

"You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that Doctor Carew has twice given you over."

"No," said I; "there was no fear of that. I am like that man in the old German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby his chance to die. Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery; I have tried him too often."

"Hush!" she said; "'tis an ill thing to jest about. Why should you want to die?"

"Rather ask why I should choose to live. But this is beside the mark. You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must e'en make the best of it."

She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of the heart; I knew not what.

"'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, n'est-ce pas? And I must not let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at all—'tis Doctor Carew's order."

So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows; and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell asleep.

This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of dreams.

By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and once—but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and drowse in the great chair—I opened my eyes to find that my company was the master of the house.

He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.

"I give ye good even, Captain Ireton," he said, finally, rasping the greeting out at me as it had been a curse. "I hope ye've slept well."

I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.

"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish pause.

"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this room, Mr. Stair," I would say.

He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good care of his own; and I laughed.

"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir."

He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed to. But his spoken word belied the nods.

"The ways of Providence are inscrutable—something inscrutable, Captain Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your mercies."

"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier, I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the field."

"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."

"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.

"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some—yourself, for example, and the leal land of adoption for others—your humble servant, to wit. I've taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to know."

At this I must needs laugh outright.

"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"

"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice, Captain Ireton."

Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.

"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across the prov—the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying, 'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other day at Guilford Court House."

"A victory?" I would ask.

"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington, they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his reaving redcoats in these parts."

His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at, telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently it showed its head.

"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship. I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit land for ye."

"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of saying more.

"I have that—every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to account to ye for every season's crop—when ye'll pay down the bit steward's fee."

"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"

He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the gullibility of his customer.

"Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a few hundred pounds, more or less—sterling, man, sterling; not Scots," he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. "I've brought ye that last will and testament ye signed," handing me the parchment. "No doubt you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a codicil or two."

Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: "Let us be frank with each other in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter between us?"

"She's a jade!" he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But he recovered his self-control instantly. "Ye'd no expect a romantic bit lassie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything, I daresay."

"Then I will tell you the plain truth of it," I said. "This marriage was never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the time; a makeshift to serve a purpose. If you think I would hold your daughter to it—"

"Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about! Ye'll never cast the poor bit lassie off that way! Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will have a word to say to that."

For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to. Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.

"There is no 'casting off' about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church, there is good ground for an appeal to Rome. The marriage as it stands is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still lacking everything of—"

He could not wait to let me finish.

"Lacking, d'ye say?" he rapped out, wrathfully. "And whose fault is that, ye cold-blooded stick? Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and heels into your own wife's bed-room? And how do you thank me? I'm to suppose ye quarrel wi' her like the dour-faced imp o' Sawtan that ye are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man old enough to be your father!"

'Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it. Yet I would not suffer him to bluster me aside.

"It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more as you must have known that Mistress Margery's faith was plighted to Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pass."

"Did I know it?" he shrilled. "That lang-legged jackanapes of a Dickie Jennifer? Light o' love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a finger for him."

"You are talking far enough beside the mark now," I retorted. "Your daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from the wars."

"She will, ye say? And what will become o' the braw acres of Appleby that gait, I'd like to know? But ye're daft, man; clean daft. Didn't I speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode away after they had pitten ye to bed? She tell't him flat she loved another man."

"Another man?" I echoed. "I—explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair. What other man—"

He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.

"Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!" he quavered, when all his breath was spent upon the bigger malisons. "Has it never come intil your thick numbskull that the poor fule lassie is sick wi' love for ye, ye dour-faced loon?"

And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the choice phrases he could lay tongue to.



LII

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END

I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said to the one account—the miser's.

Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.

I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap at the door and Mistress Margery entered.

"Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is turned?" she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the candles in the mantel sconces.

The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?

Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a passing gust of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.

For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.

"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel with him."

"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to give me this," I added, handing her the will.

She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there softly to herself.

—"'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife, Margery—' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so, would you, Monsieur John?"

"'Tis but a form," I would say. "All wives are 'loving' in lawyers' speech."

She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.

"I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?"

I would not let her pin me down.

"If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery."

"Not once?"

"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at day-dawn in the oak glade?"

She would not answer me direct.

"'Twas I who brought you to that pass," she said, speaking soft and low. "But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have followed."

Saying this she fell silent for a space, and when she spoke again she was become by some subtle transmutation my trusting little maid of the by-gone halcyon-time.

"Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days, Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me, had I had one?"

I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.

"Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again to-night?"

"Try me and see, dear lady."

"Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'" she pouted. "'Twas 'Margery' and 'Monsieur John' a year agone."

"Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you better."

"No," she said; "that is Dick's name for me; and—and it is of Dick that I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?"

I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond there was between us.

"Truly?" There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of the word, but it was gone when she went on.

"Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better. Tell me, if you please, must I marry him—when—"

"When you are free to do it?" I finished for her. "Why should you not, my dear?"

She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.

"You used to say—in that other time—that love should go before a marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?"

"You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present. But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you—"

She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of happy children at play.

"And I?—now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell me; do I love him as his mistress should?"

"Nay, surely," said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me, "surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since."

"Have I?" she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that came straight from her French mother. "Mayhap you overheard me say it, Monsieur Eavesdropper?"

"God help me, little one—so I did," said I.

All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like an accusing goddess.

"You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that I had not failed in any wifely duty!"

"The time and circumstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far from blaming you, my dear. But let it pass, 'tis enough that I know you love him as he loves you."

Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon the hassock, laughing merrily.

"O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman's heart! 'Tis you should be the lover, instead of Dick. He rides a-courting as he would charge a legion on a battle-field. But nothing would ever tempt you to be so masterful rough, would it, Monsieur John? You would look deep into your sweetheart's eyes and say—Tell me what you would say, mon ami?"

Ah, my dears, I hope no one of you will ever be tempted as I was tempted then. I forgot my dear lad, forgot honor, forgot everything save that I had leave to tell her how I had loved her from the first; how I should go on loving her to the end. So for a moment I hung trembling on the brink; and then she pushed me over.

"Is this how you would do, Monsieur—Monsieur Ogre?—sit stock still and glower at the poor thing as if you were between two minds as to loving her or eating her?"

I bent quickly, took her face between my hands and kissed her twice—thrice.

"That is what I should do. Now that you have made me what I was not before, are you satisfied?"

'Twas long before she gave me a word. And when she spoke it was only to say: "Are you not most monstrous ashamed, Monsieur John?"

"No!" said I. "I am but a man, and you have roused that part of me that knows neither shame nor remorse. I love you, Mistress Margery; do you hear? I have loved you since that day in June when I came back from death's door to find you sitting here to bear me company."

She locked her fingers across her knee and would not look at me.

"But by your own showing you should be ashamed, sir," she insisted. "What of the dear friend to whom you would give up even the love of your mistress?"

"You may flay me as you will; I shall neither flinch nor go back from my word. You are mine, and I shall give you up to no man. I know I have not your love—shall never have it. Also, I know that I have gained an enemy where once I had a loving friend. Richard Jennifer may kill me if he please—he shall have the chance to do it; but you are mine and shall be whilst I live to claim and hold you."

There was something less than anger in the blue-gray eyes when she let me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful mockery in them when she said: "Dear heart! how masterful rough you have grown, all in a moment, my Lord." And then the beautiful eyes filled and she said, "Poor Dick!" in a way to make me suffer all the torments of that old myth-king who could never quaff the water that was ever rising to his lips.

"Aye, you may love him, if you must and will," I gloomed. "God pity me! I know you do love him."

She looked up quickly. "So you have said a dozen times before. Tell me, Monsieur Oracle, how do you know it?"

"If I tell you, you will hate me more than you do now."

"That would be hard, indeed," she murmured. "Yet I would hear you say it."

"Listen, then: once, when we three were at the very door and threshold of death, you wrote the cry of your heart out on a bit of paper for a leave-taking and sent it to the man you loved. You said, 'Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your dear friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone.' Were not these your very words?"

Her "yes" was but the lightest whisper, but I heard it and went on. "That is all, save this; the Indian bearer of your letter blundered and gave it me instead of Dick."

She looked me full in the eyes and my soul went all afire. Then she laid her cheek against my knee and I heard her dear voice as it had been a chime of sweet-toned joy-bells:

"Ah, Monsieur John; how blind this thing called love can make us all. Suppose—suppose the Indian did not blunder, dear lord and master of me?"

THE END