Chapter XIII: Part 13

"George Washington; ah, there is a man, indeed," said Sevier, his dark-blue eyes lighting up. "Whilst he lives, there is always a good hope. But we must be doing, gentlemen, and so must you. God speed you both. Our compliments to General Gates, Mr. Jennifer; and you may tell him what I have told you--that but for our redskin threateners we should right gladly join him. As for Lord Cornwallis, you, Captain Ireton, will know best what to say to him. I pray God you may say it and come off alive to tell us how he took it."

We made our acknowledgments; and when I had bespoken good care for Tybee, we took leave of these stout fighters, and of old Ephraim as well, since the borderer was to serve as a guide for the over-mountain men, at least till they were come upon familiar ground to the westward.

'Twas now hard upon ten of the clock in the forenoon, and we had our last sight of the brave little army whilst it was wending its way slowly down the slopes of King's Mountain. Of what became of it; how its weary march dragged on from day to day; how it was hampered by the train of captives, halted by rain-swollen torrents, and was well-nigh starved withal; of all these things you may read elsewhere. But now you must ride with Richard Jennifer and me, and our way lay to the eastward.

All that Sunday we pressed forward, hasting as we could through the stark columned aisles of the autumn-stripped forest, and looking hourly to come upon Tarleton's legion marching out to Ferguson's relief.

Since Richard Jennifer had ridden to the hounds in all this middle ground from boyhood, we were able to take my blind wanderings in reverse as the arrow flies; and by nightfall we were well down upon the main traveled road leading to Beattie's fording of the Catawba.

As your map will show you, this was taking me somewhat out of my way to the northward; but it was Richard's most direct route to Salisbury and beyond, and by veering thus we made the surer of missing Colonel Tarleton, who, as we thought, would likely cross the river at the lower ford.

Once in the high road we pushed on briskly for the river, nor did we draw rein until the sweating beasts were picking their way in the darkness down the last of the hills which sentinel the Catawba to the westward.

At the foot of this hill a by-road led to Macgowan's ford some six miles farther down the river, and here, as I supposed, our ways would lie apart. But when we came to the forking of the road, Richard pulled his mount into the by-path, clapping the spurs to the tired horse so that we were a good mile beyond the forking before I could overtake him.

"How now, lad?" said I, when I had run him down. "Would you take a fighting hazard when you need not? There is sure to be a British patrol at the lower ford."

He jerked his beast down to a walk and we rode in silence side by side for a full minute before he said gruffly: "You'd never find the way alone."

I laughed. "Barring myself, you are the clumsiest of evaders, Dick. I am on my own ground here, and that you know as well as I."

"Damn you!" he gritted between his teeth. "When we are coming near Appleby Hundred you are fierce enough to be rid of me."

I saw his drift at that: how he would take all the chance of capture and a spy's rope for the sake of passing within a mile of Mistress Margery, or of the house he thought she was in.

"Go back, Dick, whilst you may," said I. "She is not at Appleby Hundred."

He turned upon me like a lion at bay.

"What have you done with her?"

"Peace, you foolish boy. I am not her keeper. Her father took her to Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home."

He reined up short in the narrow way. "So?" he said, most bitingly. "And that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with the one to Gates. By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change rôles here and now!"

Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing. Here was a man who had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman might.

And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say: "You think I am standing in your way, Richard Jennifer? Well, so I am; for whilst I live you may not have her. Why don't you draw and cut me down?"

'Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.

"On guard!" he cried; "draw and defend yourself!" and with that the great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.

What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time to parry the descending blow. But at the balancing instant the brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would, with her husband's blood upon his head.

So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees' hive buzzing in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side. My head was on Richard's knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his soaked kerchief.

XLI

HOW I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE

You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain me outright.

"I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite," he would say. "The devil whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse to thrust me out of the way. And when I saw you would not stir, 'twas too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade. Oh, God help me! I'll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me to hell again."

"Nay," said I; "no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard. We are but two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us. But you need not fight me for it. The love is yours--not mine."

"Don't say that, Jack; I'm selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is not. I know whereof I speak."

"No," I denied, struggling to my feet; "it has been yours from the first, Dick. I am but a sorry interloper."

For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the effects of the blow, he went on.

"I say I know, and I do, Jack. She has refused me again."

I groaned in spirit. I knew it must have come to that. Yet I would ask when and where.

"'Twas on our last day's riding," he went on; "after we had had your note saying you would undertake a mission for Colonel Davie."

I took two steps and groped for the horse's bridle rein.

"Did she tell you why she must refuse you?"

He helped me find the rein for my hand and the stirrup for my foot.

"There was no 'why' but the one--she does not love me."

"But I say she does, Dick; and I, too, know whereof I speak."

He flung me into the saddle as a strong man might toss a boy, and I understood how that saying of mine had gone into his blood.

"Then there must be some barrier that I know not of," he said. Whereupon he put hand to head as one who tries to remember. "Stay; did you not say there was a barrier, Jack?--when we were wrestling with death in the Indian fires? Or did I dream it?"

"You did not dream it. But you were telling me what she said."

"Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart would burst."

I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was up and we were moving on. Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier, Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?"

"Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood there is in the heart at such times."

We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning, saying, whilst we let the horses drink: "'Tis patrolled on the other bank, you say?"

"It was when I passed it a few days agone."

"Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk you need not take--to have me with you."

But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:

"No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a second blade to see you safe through."

"And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no doubt it will?"

I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the pinch."

He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.

"By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you carry, Jack Ireton!"

"Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on."

"But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters."

"If I am recognized--yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the outpost need not betray me."

At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you: namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord Cornwallis got entangled some months later--but I must not anticipate.

We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster, and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.

"What for it, then?" he asked, impatiently. "My courage is freezing whilst we wait."

"There is nothing for it but to hold straight on across," I said.

"That we can not; 'twill be over the horses' ears. The beasts will drown themselves and us as well."

How we should have argued it out I do not know, for just then Jennifer's horse, scenting the troop mounts on the farther shore, cocked tail and ears, let out a squealing neigh, and fell to curveting and plunging in a racket that might have stood for the splashings of an advancing army.

In a twinkling the outpost camp was astir and a bellowing hail came to us across the water. Having no answer, the troopers began to let off their pieces haphazard in the darkness; and with the singing _zip_ of the first musket ball, Richard went battle-mad, as he always did in the face of danger.

"At them!" he thundered, clapping spurs to his jaded beast and whipping out the great claymore; and so we charged, the forlornest hope that ever fell upon an enemy.

How we came ashore alive through the gun-fire is one of those mysteries to which every battle adds its quota; but the poor beasts we rode were not so lucky. Jennifer's horse went down while we were yet some yards from the bank; and mine fell a moment later. To face a score of waiting enemies afoot was too much for even Richard's rash courage; so when we were free of the struggling horses we promptly dove for shelter under the up-stream bank.

Here the darkness stood our friend; and when the redcoat troopers came down to the river's edge with torches to see what had become of us, we took advantage of the noise they made and stole away up-stream till a shelving beach gave us leave to climb to the valley level above.

Richard shook himself like a water-soaked spaniel and laughed grimly.

"Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to death," he commented. "What next?"

I made him a bow. "You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house and see what we can discover."

He entered at once into the spirit of the jest, and together we trudged the scant mile through the stubble-fields to my old roof-tree. As you would guess, we looked to find the manor house turned into an outpost headquarters; but now we were desperate enough to face anything.

Howbeit, not to rush blindly into the jaws of a trap, we first routed out the old black majordomo at the negro quarters; and when we learned from him that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more; when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's laying in.

"A toast!" cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet with the glass held high. "To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another, Jack Ireton!"

We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught whilst that first one lived.

You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for what must come--and so it did, though not as I prefigured.

We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.

His last word to me was one of generous caution.

"Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to betray you."

"Trust me," said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward, and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set abuzz in the small hours of the night.

XLII

IN WHICH MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS

Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with nothing like the welcome at the outpost camp that a king's courier had a right to expect.

The captain in command was not the one who had passed me out. He was a surly brute of the Yorkshire breed; and when he had heard that I was an express rider from Major Ferguson, he was pleased to demand my papers.

To this I must needs make answer that I carried no written despatches; that my news was for the commander-in-chief's private ear. This I told my Yorkshire pig, demanding to be sent, under guard if he chose, to the headquarters in Charlotte.

But Captain Nobbut would hear to no such reasonable proposal. On the contrary, he would hold me in arrest till he could report me and have instructions from his colonel.

Knowing what a stake it was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling back with an order to set me forthwith upon the road to headquarters.

Once free of the camp of detention you may be sure I put Blackstar to his best paces; but hasten as I would it was coming on to evening when I passed the inner safety line and galloped down the high street of the town.

As luck would have it, the first familiar face I saw was that of Charles Stedman, the commissary-general. On my inquiry he directed me straight.

"My Lord is at supper at Mr. Stair's. Have you news, Captain?"

I drew breath of relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None the less, if the commissary-general were pleased to come with me--

He took the hint at once; and he it was who procured me instant admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.

I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.

At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's radiant beauty.

"How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?"

I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.

"I do, my Lord."

"Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new loyalist levies, I hope?"

I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.

"May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord," I said, quietly.

Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot where my lady sat.

"How is this, sir?--explain yourself!" thundered my Lord, forgetting for once his mild suavity.

"'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the telling," I replied. "I came upon the major some miles this side of the crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight, he obeyed."

"My command?--but I gave him no such order!"

"Nay, truly, you did not--neither in the original nor in the duplicate, my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men."

For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord quelled the fierce outburst with a word.

"Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this traitor," he said. And then to me: "Go on, sir, if you please; there has been a battle, as I take it?"

"There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the field was a prisoner."

Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords aside.

"Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton," he said. "You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your submission to me?"

"It was."

"And you have been a rebel from the first?"

I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.

"I have, my Lord--since the day nine years agone when I learned that your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation."

"Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the western mountains?"

"Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo."

"And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?"

"I do so hope and trust, my Lord."

He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for, bent like a withe and would not snap.

"Put this spy in irons and clear the room," he ordered sharply. And this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word which should efface me.

XLIII

IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA

Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.

The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.

I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them down.

I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs--which, by the by, were strangely bitter.

I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.

When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis, that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.

Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel, I sprang up quickly--and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman in his first gale at sea.

The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing--the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.

It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and tender asked: "Are you awake, Monsieur John?"

I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.

"_Merci, Monsieur_," she said, icily. And then: "Gratitude does not seem to be amongst your gifts."

At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.

"Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some one must needs spoil me of that!"

"Selfish--selfish always and to the last," she murmured. "Do you never give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?"

This was past all endurance.

"If I had not, should I be here this moment?" I raved. "You do make me sicker than I was, my lady."

"Yet I say you are selfish," she insisted. "What have I done that you should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?"

"Let us have plain speech, in God's name," I retorted. "You know well enough there was no better way in which I could serve you."

"Do I, indeed, _mon ami_?" she flashed out. "Let me tell you, sir, had she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair--or Margery Ireton, if you like that better--would kill you with her own hand rather than have it said her husband died upon a gallows!"

A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.

"God in Heaven!" I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"

She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.

"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."

"But you do not deny it!" I cried.

"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"

"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?"

"Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet."

"Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are having your revenge of me."

"_Merci, encore._ Shall I go away and leave you?"

"No, not that." A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I added: "But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that."

All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my throbbing temples.

"Poor Monsieur John!" she said softly; "I meant not to make you suffer more, but rather less." Then she found water and a napkin to wring out and bind upon my aching head.

At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she had brought me to this.

"Ah, that is better--better," I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my temples gave me some surcease of the agony.

"Then you forgive me?" she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I could not tell.

"There is none so much to forgive," I replied. "One hopeless day last summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you--in common justice you have the right to do what you will with it."

"Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you than for me."

"I know it," said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must grind upon her. "But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps in to break the bond."

Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.

"Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all."

But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt more like a man and less like a baited bear.

"That is better," said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of a man who was never minded to run away."

"But you are going to run away," she said, decisively; "and that as soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not poison you this time."

"Stay," I cried. "You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can find me."

She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.

"No; you are a soldier, and--and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the battle-field." And with that she left me.

I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit, Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the English.

And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret," she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it."

But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.

"Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he had not guessed."

On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.

"You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter."

"True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam."

Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.

"How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me presently, for good and all."

"Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding."

"_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling us both, Captain Ireton?"

"I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open--if you will but drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs."

"Oh, yes--a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir, if you have not."

"Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well enough to hang."

"And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before, you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton."

I closed my eyes in very weariness.

"You are hard to please, my lady."

"You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away--to-night."

"Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"

"My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends."

She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.

"Stay a moment," I begged. "You are leaving the untangling of this coil you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought that the Church can undo what the Church has done?"

Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.

"You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed; then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.

I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.

XLIV

HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END

It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the Carolinas.

As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander; and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene, the "Hickory Quaker."

Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first inspection of Horatio Gates's poor "shadow of an army" on that dismal December day in Charlotte.

In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man, pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.

The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of openness that a dark man is like to miss.

A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more prophetic eye.

"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way--a heat at a time, and a blow at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.

Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field, in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with fringings of the same--a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no tailor-fine coat could have set it off.

When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath, that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in open defiance of all discipline.

Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the "Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse, out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.

Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, "the Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.

But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.

As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.

Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.

Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his stirrup and share his hazards.

Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale, and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who was enamored of death.

As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at me day and night.

Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at each remembrance of the hand that gave them.

One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the caretaker of the deserted town house.

As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night; yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.

I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess. For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate should open for me.

'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her--the desire and another thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come, and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.

As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate, drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now waiting to sprout and grow.

It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.

Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian scalping-knife thrust through it.

Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.

"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.

"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily: "'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."

At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the point.

_Monsieur:

"When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had
done. I have spoken to the good Père Matthieu, and he has consented
to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he
should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own
seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Père
Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."_

That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.

"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him off no longer.

"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"

"'Tis about--it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I, equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress re-established my right and title to the estate?"

"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"

"About a matter touching it, as I say."

"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily at the back of it.

When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying. He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.

"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."

"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled in me.

"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."

"Well? And if I do chance to see her--what then?"

"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of me."

"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save--"

"Save what?" he broke in savagely.

I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.

"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the spying."

"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."