Chapter X: Part 10

"Ez I reckon, that's about the long and short of it. And I do everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride skimper-scamper again, when she's been fair living a-horseback for a fortnight."

"She will not fail you," I ventured to say, adding: "But Jennifer is in poor fettle for making speed."

"It's ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he'll ride," quoth the old hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. "Reckon we can get him on a hoss right now."

I went to see. Margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light I could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper distance.

"Your patient, Mistress Margery,--We must mount and ride at once. Is he fit?"

"No."

"But we must be far to the eastward before daybreak."

"I can not help it. If you make him ride to-night you will finish what those cruel savages began, Captain Ireton."

"We have little choice--none, I should say."

"Oh, you are bitter hard!" she cried, though wherein my offending lay just then I was wholly at a loss to know.

"'Tis your privilege to say so," I rejoined. "But as for making Dick ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. We are only a little way from the nearest Indian towns, and if the daylight find us here--"

"Spare me," she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked Ephraim Yeates to put her in her saddle.

Richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my urging and let us set him upon his beast. Once safe in the saddle, we lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back to hold him erect. This last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas most ingenious. The forked limb, in shape like a Y, was set astride the cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to Dick's legs and to the girths. Thus the upright stem of the inverted Y became an easy back-rest for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.

When all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain top; and now even the old borderer and the Indian confessed their inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight, and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.

This route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the vengeance-cry. But here again there was no alternative, and we set us in order for the descent, with Yeates and the Catawba ahead, the women and Dick in the midst, and her Apostolic Majesty's late captain of hussars, masquerading as a British trooper, to bring on the rear.

Once in motion beneath the blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a thickset grove of the pines, and Ephraim Yeates appeared at my stirrup to say:

"H'ist ye off your nag, Cap'n John, and let's take a far'well squinch at the inimy whilst we can."

"Where? what enemy?" I would ask, slipping from the saddle at his word.

"Why, the hoss-captain's varmints, to be sure; or what-all the abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. We ain't more than a cat's jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on 'em this morning."

I saw not what was to be gained by any such long-range espial in the darkness. None the less, I followed the old man to the cliff's edge. He was wiser in his forecastings than I was in mine. There was a thing to look at, and light enough to see it by. One of the missile stones, it seems, had crashed into the great fire, scattering the brands in all directions. The pine-bough troop shelters were ablaze, and creeping serpents of fire were worming their way hither and yon over the year-old leaf beds in the wood. Ever and anon some pine sapling in the path of these fiery serpents would go up in a torch-like flare; and so, as I say, there was light enough.

What we looked down upon was not inaptly pictured out by Ephraim Yeates's Scripture phrase, the abomination of desolation. Every vestige of the camp save the glowing skeletons of the troop shelters had disappeared, and the swarded savanna was become a blackened chaos-blot on the fair woodland scene. I have said that the powder-sheltering boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast upon the camp.

At first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space. But a moment later, when three or four of the sapling torches blazed up together, we made out some half dozen figures of human beings--whether red or white we could not tell--stumbling and reeling about among the rocks like blind men drunken.

At sight of these the old hunter doffed his cap and fell upon his knees with hands uplifted to pour out his zealot's soul in the awful sentences of the Psalmist's imprecation.

"'Let God arise, and let His inimies be scattered; let them also that hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away; and like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God....'"

XXXI

IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH

It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into the Great Trace near the ambush ground where we had set our trap for the peace men.

The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were burning like points of white fire in the black dome of the heavens. As often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in fullest tide; and a whip-will's-widow, disturbed by our approach, fluttered to a higher perch and set up his plaintive protest.

At our turning eastward on the trace, the old hunter massed our little company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to follow cautiously, tossed his bridle rein to the Catawba and went on ahead to feel out the way.

This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred we were together and measurably alone.

Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But, womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.

"Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?" she said, bitterly; and then: "How you must despise me!"

I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing the outlet of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back smartly.

"You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise you!"

"Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!" I protested. "'Tis my misfortune to be ever blundering."

But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again throughout the passage perilous.

By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old borderer awaiting us.

"Ez I allow, we've smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," he said, mixing metaphor, Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont. Then he put a leg over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: "From now on, old Jehu, the son o' Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind, Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your sword-p'int."

Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur, pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in the blind race.

I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road. Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the opener forest of the hill country.

The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba or the Broad.

"'Tis the Broad itself," said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking; "and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch Broad."

"But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright," said I.

"So it do, so it do--in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for Sunday, by spells."

"If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege country, as I take it."

"Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little gal?" this last to Margery.

Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.

"I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so."

"Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o' sleep immejitly, _if_ not sooner, now."

So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came to help me ease Dick down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever delirium had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.

"How did we come out of it, Jack?" he asked, when we had let him feel the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.

"As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself. You're the heaviest loser."

He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was with him.

"That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the richest gainer."

"What did you dream?"

He beckoned me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me."

"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for the breakfast cakes.

'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.

At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest. Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the journey paused.

We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood. Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,--of its own accord, or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,--and at the end of the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the forked stick to hold him in the saddle.

After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind, or of the Catawba's.

You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.

But when the strain was off and Dick was up and fit again, the misery of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble of his love for her in his feverish vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her notice.

And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward faring.

As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave it out in solitude, cursing the day that I was born, and that other more misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impassable between these two.

What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was beyond forgiveness.

'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach Queensborough by evening, that my deliverance came. I say deliverance because at the moment it had the look of a short shrift and a ready halter.

We had crossed our own Catawba and were putting our horses at the steep bank on the outcoming side, when my saddle slipped. Dismounting to tighten the girth, I called to the others to press on, saying I should overtake them shortly.

The promise was never kept. I scarce had my head under the saddle flap before a couple of stout knaves in homespun, appearing from I know not where, had me fast gripped by the arms, whilst a third made sure of the horse.

"A despatch rider," said the bigger of the two who pinioned me. "Search him, Martin, lad, whilst I hold him; then we'll pay him out for Tarleton's hanging of poor Sandy M'Guire."

I held my peace and let them search, taking the threat for a bit of soldier bullyragging meant to keep me quiet. But when they had turned the pockets of my borrowed coat inside out and ripped the lining and made it otherwise as much the worse for their mishandling as it was for wear, the third man fetched a rope.

"Did you mean that, friend?--about the hanging?" I asked, wondering if this should be my loophole of escape from the life grown hateful.

"Sure enough," said the big man, coolly. "You'd best be saying your prayers."

I laughed. "Were you wearing my coat and I yours, you might hang me and welcome; in truth, you may as it is. Which tree will you have me at?"

The man stared at me as at one demented. Then he burst out in a guffaw. "Damme, if you bean't a cool plucked one! I've a mind to take you to the colonel."

"Don't do it, my friend. Though I am something loath to be snuffed out by the men of my own side, we need not haggle over the niceties. Point out your tree."

"No, by God! you're too willing. What's at the back of all this?"

"Nothing, save a decent reluctance to spoil your sport. Have at it, man, and let's be done with it."

"Not if you beg me on your knees. You'll go to the colonel, I say, and he may hang you if he sees fit. You must be a most damnable villain to want to die by the first rope you lay eyes on."

"That is as it may be. Who is your colonel?"

"Nay, rather, who are you?"

I gave my name and circumstance and was loosed of the hand-grip, though the third man dropped the cord and stepped back to hold me covered with his rifle.

"An Ireton, you say? Not little Jock, surely!"

"No, big Jock; big enough to lay you on your back, though you do have a hand as thick as a ham."

He ignored the challenge and stuck to his text. "I never thought to see the son of old Mad-bull Roger wearing a red coat," he said.

"That is nothing. Many as good a Whig as I am has been forced to wear a red coat ere this, or go barebacked. But why don't you knot the halter? In common justice you should either hang me or feed me. 'Tis hard upon noon, and I breakfasted early."

"Fall in!" said the big man; and so I was marched quickly aside from the road and into the denser thicketing of the wood. Here my captors blindfolded me, and after spinning me around to make me lose the compass points, hurried me away to their encampment which was inland from the stream, though not far, for I could still hear the distance-minished splashing of the water.

When the kerchief was pulled from my eyes I was standing in the midst of a mounted riflemen's halt-camp, face to face with a young officer wearing the uniform of the colonelcy in the North Carolina home troops. He was a handsome young fellow, with curling hair and trim side-whiskers to frame a face fine-lined and eager--the face of a gentleman well-born and well-bred.

"Captain Ireton?" he said; by which I guessed that one of my capturers had run on ahead to make report.

"The same," I replied.

"And you are the son of Mr. Justice Roger Ireton, of Appleby Hundred?"

"I have that honor."

He gave me his hand most cordially.

"You are very welcome, Captain; Davie is my name. I trust we may come to know each other better. You are in disguise, as I take it; do you bring news of the army?"

"On the contrary, I am thirsting for news," I rejoined. "I and three others have but now returned from pursuing a British and Indian powder convoy into the mountains to the westward. We have been out five weeks and more."

He looked at me curiously. "You and three others?" he queried. "Come apart and tell me about it whilst Pompey is broiling the venison. I scent a whole Iliad in that word of yours, Captain Ireton."

"One thing first, if you please, Colonel Davie," I begged. "My companions are faring forward on the road to Queensborough. They know naught of my detention. Will you send a man to overtake them with a note from me?"

The colonel indulged me in the most gentlemanly manner; and when my note to Jennifer was despatched we sat together at the roots of a great oak and I told him all that had befallen our little rescue party. He heard me through patiently, and when the tale was ended was good enough to say that I had earned a commission for my part in the affair. I laughed and promptly shifted that burden to Ephraim Yeates's shoulders.

"The old hunter was our general, Colonel Davie. He did all of the planning and the greater part of the executing. But for him and the friendly Catawba, it would have gone hard with Jennifer and me."

"I fear you are over-modest, Captain," was all the reply I got; and then my kindly host fell amuse. When he spoke again 'twas to give me a résumé in brief of the military operations North and South.

At the North, as his news ran, affairs remained as they had been, save that now the French king had sent an army to supplement the fleet, and Count Rochambeau and the allies were encamped on Rhode Island ready to take the field.

In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving to reassemble his scattered forces.

A few military partizans, like my host, had kept the field, doing what the few might against the many to retard my Lord Cornwallis's northward march; and a week earlier the colonel with his handful of mounted riflemen had dared to oppose his entry into Charlotte.

"'Twas no more than a hint to his Lordship that we were not afraid of him," said my doughty colonel. "You know the town, I take it?"

"Very well, indeed."

"Well, we had harassed him all the way from Blair's Mill, and 'twas midnight when we reached Charlotte. There we determined to make a stand and give him a taste of our mettle. We dismounted, took post behind the stone wall of the court house green and under cover of the fences along the road."

"Good! an ambush," said I.

"Hardly that, since they were looking to have resistance. Tarleton was sick, and Major Hanger commanded the British van. He charged, and we peppered them smartly. They tried it again, and this time their infantry outflanked us. We abandoned the court house and formed again in the eastern edge of the town; and now, bless you! 'twas my Lord Charles himself who had to ride forward and flout at his men for their want of enterprise."

"But you could never hope to hold on against such odds!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, no; but we held them for a third charge, and beat them back, too. Then they brought up two more regiments and we mounted and got off in tolerably good order, losing only six men killed. But Colonel Francis Locke was one of these; and my brave Joe Graham was all but cut to pieces--a sore blow to us just now."

The colonel sighed and a silence fell upon us. 'Twas I who broke it to say: "Then we are still playing a losing hand in the South, as I take it?"

"'Tis worse than that. As the game stands we have played all our trumps and have not so much as a long suit left. Cornwallis will go on as he pleases and overrun the state, and the militia will never stand to front him again under Horatio Gates. Worse still, Ferguson is off to the westward, embodying the Tories by the hundred, and we shall have burnings and hangings and harryings to the king's taste."

I nursed my knee a moment and then said: "What may one man do to help, Colonel Davie?"

He looked up quickly. "Much, if you are that man, and you do not value your life too highly, Captain Ireton."

"You may leave that out of the question," said I. "I shall count it the happiest moment of my life when I shall have done something worth their killing me for."

Again he gave me that curious look I had noted before. Then he laughed.

"If you were as young as Major Joe Graham, and had been well crossed in love, I could understand you better, Captain. But, jesting aside, there is a thing to do, and you are the man to do it. Our spies are thick in Cornwallis's camp, but what is needed is some master spirit who can plot as well as spy for us. Major Ferguson moves as Cornwallis pulls the strings. Could we know the major's instructions and designs, we might cut him off, bring the Tory uprising to the ground, and so hearten the country beyond measure. I say we might cut him off, though I know not where the men would come from to do it."

"Well?" said I, when he paused.

"The preliminary is some better information than our spies can give us. Now you have been an officer in the British service, and--"

I smiled. "Truly; and I have the honor, if you please to call it so, of his Lordship's acquaintance. Also, I have that of Colonel Tarleton and the members of his staff, the same having tried and condemned me as a spy at Appleby Hundred some few weeks before this chase I have told you of."

His face fell. "Then, of course, it is out of the question for you to show yourself in Cornwallis's headquarters."

I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.

"On the contrary, Colonel Davie, I am more than ever at your service. Let me have a cut of your venison and a feed for my horse, and I shall be at my Lord's headquarters as soon as the nag can carry me there."

XXXII

IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET

"Tis a very pretty hazard, Captain Ireton. But can it be brought off successfully, think you?"

"As I have said, it hangs somewhat upon the safety of my portmanteau. If that has come through unseized to Mr. Pettigrew at Charlotte, and I can lay hands on it, 'twill be half the battle."

"You say you left it behind you at New Berne?"

"Yes; Mr. Carey was to forward it as he could."

Colonel Davie had given me bite and sup, and I was ready to take the road. My plan, such as it was, had been determined upon, and to the furthering of it, the colonel had written me a letter to a friend in the town who might shelter me for a night and make the needed inquiry for my belongings. Also, he had given me another letter, of which more anon, and had pressed upon me a small purse of gold pieces--a treasure rare enough in patriot hands in that impoverished time.

When all was done, two of my late captors were ordered to set me straight in the road; and some half-hour past noon I had shaken hands with the big fellow in homespun who had been so bent upon hanging me without benefit of clergy, had crossed the river, and was making the first looping in a detour which should bring me into Charlotte from the westward.

'Twas drawing on toward evening, and I had recrossed the river a mile or more below Appleby Hundred, when I began to meet the outposts of the British army. I was promptly halted by the first of these; but my borrowed uniform and a ready word or two passed me within the lines as a courier riding post to headquarters from Major Ferguson in the west.

The lieutenant in command of the first vedette line was not over-curious. He asked me a few questions about the major's plans and dispositions,--questions which, thanks to Colonel Davie's information, I was able to answer glibly enough, swallowed my tale whole, and was so obliging as to give me the password for the night to help me through the inner sentry lines.

Thus fortified, I rode on boldly, and having the countersign the difficulties vanished. When I was come to town it was well past candle-lighting; and the patrol was out in force. But by dint of using the password freely I made my way unhindered to the house of the gentleman to whom Colonel Davie's letter accredited me.

Here, however, the difficulties began. Though the camp of the army lay just without the town to the southward, the officers were quartered in every house, and that of Colonel Davie's friend was full to overflowing. What was to be done we knew not, but at the last moment my friend's friend thought of an expedient and wrote a note for me whilst I waited, half in hiding, in the outer hall.

"'Tis a desperate chance, but these are desperate times," said my would-be helper. "I am sending you to the town house of one of our plantation seigneurs--a man who is fish, flesh or fowl, as his interest demands. I hear he came in to-day to take protection, and there is a chance that he will shelter you for the sake of your red coat and a gold piece or two. But I warn you, you must be what you appear to be--a soldier of the king--and not what this note of Colonel Davie's says you are."

Seeing a wide field of danger-chances in this haphazarding, I would have asked more about this trimming gentleman to whom I was to be handed on; but at that moment there came a thundering at the door, and my anxious host was fain to hustle me out through the kitchen as he could, catching up a black boy on the way to be my guide.

"God speed you," he said at parting. "Make your footing good for the night, if you can, and we'll see what can be done to-morrow. I'll send your portmanteau around in the morning, if so be Mr. Pettigrew has it."

With that I was out in the night again, turning and doubling after my guide, who seemed to be greatly afeard lest I should come nigh enough to cast an evil eye upon him.

'Twas but a little distance we had to go, and I had no word out of my black rascal till we reached the door-stone of a familiar mansion but one remove from the corner of the court house green. Here, with a stuttering "D-d-dis de house, Massa," he fled and left me to enter as I could.

Since the street was busily astir with redcoat officers and men coming and going, and any squad of these might be the questioners to doubt my threadbare courier tale, I lost no time in running up the steps and hammering a peal with the heavy knocker. Through the side-lights I could see that the wide entrance hall was for the moment unoccupied; but at the knocker-lifting I had a flitting glimpse of some one--a little man all in sober black--coming down the stair. There was no immediate answer to my peal, but when I would have knocked again the door was swung back and I stepped quickly within to find myself face to face with--Margery.

I know not which of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me a low-dipped curtsy and gave me my greeting.

"I bid you good evening, Captain Ireton," she said, coldly; and then with still more of the frost of unwelcome in her voice: "To what may we be indebted for this honor?"

Now, chilling as these words were, they thrilled me to my finger-tips, for they were the first she had spoken to me since the night of my offending in the black gorge of the far-off western mountains. None the less, they were blankly unanswerable, and had the door been open I should doubtless have vanished as I had come. Of all the houses in the town this was surely the last I should have run to for refuge had I known the name of its master; and it was some upflashing of this thought that helped me find my tongue.

"I never guessed this was your father's house," I stammered, bowing low to match her curtsy. "I beg you will pardon me, and let me go as I came."

She laid a hand on the door-knob. "Is--is there any one here whom you would see?" she asked; and now her eyes did not meet mine, and I would think the chill had melted a little.

"No. I was begging a night's lodging of a friend whose house is full. He sent me here with a note to--ah--to your father, as I suppose, though in his haste he did not mention the name."

She held out her hand. "Give me the letter."

"Nay," said I; "that would be but thankless work. Knowing me, your father must needs conceive it his duty to denounce me."

"Give it me!" she insisted; this with an impatient little stamp of the foot and an upglance of the compelling eyes that would have constrained me to do a far foolisher thing, had she asked it.

So I gave her the letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in her fair white neck. And with the seeing I became a fool of love again in very earnest, and was within a hair's breadth of sinking honor and all else in an outpouring of such words as a man may say once to one woman in all the world--and having said them may never unsay them.

'Twas a most practical little thing she did that saved me from falling headlong into this last ditch of dishonor. Twisting the letter into a spill she stood on tiptoe to light it at one of the candles, saying: "'Twas a foolish thing to put on paper, and might well hang the writer in such times as these. He says you are a king's man and well known to him, and you are neither." But when the letter was a crisp of blackened paper-ash she turned upon me, and once again the changeful eyes were cold and her words were stranger-formal.

"What is it you would have me do, Captain Ireton?"

"Nothing," I made haste to say; "nothing save to believe that I came here unwittingly--and to let me go."

"Where will you go? The town is alive with those who would--who would--"

"Who would show me scant mercy, you would say. True; and yet I came hither--to the town, I mean--of my own free will."

Her mood changed in the pivoting fraction of an instant, and now the beautiful eyes were alight and warm and pleadingly eloquent.

"Oh, why did you come? Are you--are you what they said you were?"

"A spy? If I am, you would scarce expect me to confess it, even to you."

"'Tis dishonorable--most dishonorable!" she cried. "I could respect a brave soldier enemy; but a spy--"

There was a clattering of hoofs in the street and a jingle of sword-scabbards on the door-stone. I wheeled to face the newcomers, determined now to front it boldly as a desperate man at bay. But before the fumbling hands without could find the door-knob Margery was beside me, all a-flutter in a trembling-fit of excitement.

"Up the stair, quickly, _pour l'amour de Dieu!_" she whispered; and we were at the clock landing when the great door opened and some half-dozen king's officers came in. We crouched together behind the balustrade till they should pass beyond the sight of us, and in the group I marked a man stout and heavy built, walking full solidly for his two-and-forty years. He wore his own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed, long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the field--Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses in the town to choose among, I had blundered into this--my Lord's own headquarters.

I had but a passing glimpse of the incoming group, for when it was well beneath the turn of the stair, my lady had me up and running again, driving me on before her to the chamber floor above, along a dimly lighted corridor with many turnings, and so to a _cul-de-sac_ in the same--a doorless passage with a high dormer window in the end and no other apparent means of egress.

Margery had snatched a candle from one of the corridor holders in the flight, and now she bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot.

Beyond the door lay a raftered garret half filled with cast-off house lumber and lighted and aired by two high roof windows. Into this she led me, with a finger on her lip for silence. A hum of voices, the clinking of glass, and now and again a hearty soldier laugh told me that my garret was above some living-room of the house.

While I stood, boots in hand, she found a makeshift candlestick and in a trice had spread me a pallet on an ancient oaken settle big enough to serve for a choir stall in a cathedral.

"You'll be safe here for the night, if so be you will make no more noise than a rat might make," she whispered. "_Mais, mon Dieu!_ 'tis a terrible risk. How you will get off in the morning I do not know."

"Leave that to me," I rejoined. Then I remembered the portmanteau and the promise that it should be sent hither. Here was a further complication, and I must needs beg a boon of her. "A black boy will bring my portmanteau in the morning. I have a decent desire to be hanged in clean clothing; may I beg you to--"

She made a quick little gesture of impatience; at the further complication, or at my boldness in asking, I knew not which. But her whispered reply was of assent, and then she turned to leave me.

At that a sudden fierce desire to know why she had thus befriended me came to throttle prudence.

"One more word before you go, Mistress Margery. Will you tell me why you have done this for the man who can serve you only by thrusting his neck into the hangman's noose?"

She was silent for a little space, and I knew not what emotion it was that moved her to turn away and cover her face with her hands. But when she spoke her voice was low and tremulous with pent-up anger, as I thought.

"Truly, Captain Ireton, you have done a thing to make me hate you--and myself, as well. But I may not forget my duty, sir."

And with this cruel word she was gone.

XXXIII

IN WHICH I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS

You are not to suppose that the hazards of this hiding place in my Lord Cornwallis's headquarters would keep me from sleeping well and soundly. One of the things a soldier learns soonest is to take his rest when and as he can; and after peering curiously into the nooks and corners of my garret to make sure I was alone, I flung myself a-sprawl on the broad settle and was dropping off into forgetfulness when I heard a tapping at the wainscot.

It fetched me wide awake with a start, and I was up and weaponed instantly--having taken the precaution to lay my sword in easy reach before blowing out the candle. Groping my way cautiously to the secret door, I crouched and listened. All was silent save for the intermittent clamor of the wassailers in the room beneath. After waiting a full minute I opened the door and looked without. The high dormer window in the end of the corridor made the darkness something less than visible, and I could see that the passage was empty. But on the floor at my feet was my supper; a roasted fowl on a server, hot from the spit, with maize bread and garnishings fit for an epicure.

Since, as an appanage of Appleby Hundred, this was mine own house, and, by consequence, the fowl was mine, I ate as a hungry man should, making no scruple on the score of pride. Nor did I forget to be grateful to my lady; though when I remembered that this was doubtless but another leaf out of her duty-book, the meat was like to choke me. And it was this thought that made me resolve thrice over to loose her from the onerous burden of me so soon as ever the morning light should come to help me find the way out of my covert prison.

None the less, for all my fine resolves to be astir and off by daybreak, the sun was shining broadly in at my garret window when I awoke.

Seeing the sun, I tumbled out of my settle-bed, with a malediction on the sloth that had bound me so fast, and made for the door. But some one had been before me, entering whilst I slept. On a broken chair were a basin and ewer, with soap and towels; beside the chair was my portmanteau; and on a deal box, neatly covered with a linen cloth, was my breakfast.

You, my dears, who have your maid or man to tell you when your bath is ready, and to lay out the fresh, clean garments sweet from the laundering, may wonder that I put away the thought of flight and let the breakfast cool whilst I shaved and washed and scrubbed, and doffed the vagabond and donned the gentleman. I did it; did it leisurely, rolling the privilege as a sweet morsel under my tongue. They say the raiment never makes the man; 'tis a half-truth only. For in his own regard, at least, the man is vagabond or gentleman as he may dress the one part or the other. And I am sure of this; that when I drew up another of the cast-off chairs to sit at meat, freshly groomed, and clad in the field uniform of a captain of her Apostolic Majesty's Hussars, I was the fitter by many transmigrations to cope with fate or any other adversary.

And now, the claims of decency paid in full, and the keen edge of hunger somewhat dulled, I was free to think of my sweet lady's loving-kindness to one she hated--and to wonder what she would do and be for one she loved. As you would guess, there were dregs of bitterness in that cup; and I was once again set sharp upon relieving her of the burden of me.

Having my Austrian uniform, I was now ready to move in that venture outlined in part to Colonel Davie; but to set my plan in action I must first get free of the house unseen by my Lord or any of his suite. How to do this unaided I could not determine; and, since any fresh blundering would surely breed new trouble for Margery, I was forced to wait for her return.

I made sure she would come, if only to be the sooner quit of me; and so she did, tapping at the wainscot door whilst I was dallying with the breakfast leavings. 'Twas worth something to see her start of surprise when I opened to her; but she was far too true a lady to be one thing to the unwashed vagabond and another to the gentleman-clad.

I gave her good morning, and was beginning in some formal fashion to thank her for her thoughtful care, when she cut me short.

"'Tis my bounden duty, sir," she said, twanging once again upon that frayed string. "You are my guest and my--husband; though God knows I would you were neither."

"_Merci, Madame_," said I; stung so sharply that the retort would out in spite of everything. "As once before, I am your poor misfortunate pensioner; but this time you are not less willing to give than I am to receive."

She gave me a look that I could not fathom, and for a flitting instant I could have sworn there was a mocking smile a-lurk at the back of the beautiful eyes. Then she went straight to the subject-matter of her errand, brushing aside the small passage at arms as if it had not been.

"You are in a most perilous situation, Captain Ireton; do you know it? News of your presence in Charlotte has got abroad, and at this very moment Tarleton's dragoons are making a house-to-house search for you."

"So; some one has betrayed me?"

She nodded.

"Do you know who it was?"

She nodded again.

I considered of it for a little time, and then said: "I must not be taken here. Will your--ah--_duty_ stretch the length of showing me an unwatched door?"

"There are no doors unwatched. You must stay here till nightfall."

"Nay, that I will not. Will you tell me who it was set them on?"

"'Twas a man you hate--and who hates you heartily in return. He saw you come here last night; he knows you are here now--or guesses it."

I had no right to pry into her confidence as a thief would break into a house. But I was loath to fight my battle in the dark if she, or any one, could give me light.

"His name, if you may give it, Mistress Margery. It may point the way out of this coil."

"'Tis Owen Pengarvin. He was here last night when you came."

Now I remembered the little man in black whom I had seen coming down the stair whilst I knocked at the door. But this left me in a greater maze than ever.

"If he knows I am here, why does he let them search elsewhere?"

At this she looked away from me, and I made sure I saw the sweet chin quiver when she spoke.

"He has reasons of his own; reasons of--of--" but instead of telling me what they were she broke off to say: "But now you know why all the doors of this house are under guard."

"Truly," said I; and therewith I fell to pacing up and down the narrow clear-way in the garret, striving to see how I might come off with nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.

'Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me. Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing, the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion was nipped in the bud. I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.

When that leaven began to work in me I was fit for the daringest thing that offered; so I paused to ask if my Lord Cornwallis were yet in the house.

"He is writing letters in his bed-room," was her answer.

"If you will show me the way thither I shall be your poor debtor by that much more."

"I will not--unless you first tell me what you mean to do." She said it firmly, but now I was fronting death and could be as firm as she.

"If you will not show me the way, I shall find it for myself." So much I said; but as for telling her that I meant to save his Lordship and all the others the trouble of running me down, I could not do that.

"You are going to give yourself up," she said; and when I would not deny it, she darted before me and set her back against the wainscot door. "'Tis folly, folly!" she cried. "He would but pull the bell-cord and--"

"And give the order that Colonel Tarleton's sentence be executed upon me, you would say. Be it so. But in that event I can at least clear you and your father of any complicity in my hiding."

"I say you shall not go!"

What touch of savagery is it in a man that will not suffer him to let a woman, loved or unloved, stand in the last resort against his will? At any other time I would have pleaded with her; would have ended, mayhap, by weakly deferring to her wish. But now--well, you must remember, my dears, that I was the trapped rat. I took her gently in my arms, set her aside, and stepped out into the corridor.

I looked for nothing less than a volcano-burst of righteous indignation to pay me out for this piece of tyranny. But now, as twice or thrice before, my lady showed me how little a man may know of a woman's moods.

"You need not be so masterful rough with me," she said, with a pouting of the sweet lips that set me back upon that thought of a wayward child wanting to be kissed. "If you say I must, I am in duty bound to show you the way." And so she led on and I followed, in a deeper maze than any she had ever set me in.

Arrived at a pair of doors in the main passage, she showed me the one that opened to my Lord's bed-chamber and ran away; ran with her hands to her face as if to shut out a sight which would not bear looking upon.

I turned my back stiffly upon this newer wonder, pulled myself together and rapped on the door. A voice within bade me enter; the door opened under my hand and I stood in the presence of the man who, as I made no doubt, would shortly summon his guards and have me out to my rope and tree.

XXXIV

HOW I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN