Chapter IV: Part 4

When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I had prayed God they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they had never offered her a chair.

The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.

So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more beautiful than I had ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame and agony.

When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our fresh offense.

"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"

"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly, thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with your sentry."

"By God, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame, Mistress Margery Stair?"

Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.

"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it. 'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."

The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.

"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."

As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and, when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his friend.

For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy liar.

"A likely story, that!" he scoffed. "Next you will say she knew not what this message was."

"I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it."

I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see? He has the letter!"

I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.

"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."

While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and drew the bow and sped the shaft.

"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love there went a duty."

"A duty, say you? How is that?"

I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye again.

"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my wife."

XI

HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH

For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by the lie.

But as it was, I faced him down; and winning him, won all. There was a muttered oath from Falconnet, a tremulous cry of rage from where her father stood; and then I sought my lady's eyes to read my sentence in them.

She gave me but a glance, and though I tried as I had never tried before to read her meaning it was hid from me. But this I marked; that she did draw aside from me, and that her face was cold and still, and that her lips were pressed together as if not all nor any should ever make her speak again.

At this sharp crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly, stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert Stair and then at Falconnet.

"God save us! I give you joy, Mr. Stair, and you, Sir Francis. These two have duped you bravely. By heavens! Sir Frank; 'twas you who should have had the sword thrust in the duel. In that event you might have stood in Captain Ireton's shoes, and so had the priest fetched for your benefit." Then he turned to Margery with a bow that had no touch of mockery in it. "I crave your pardon, Madam; I knew not you were pleading for your husband's life an hour ago. It grieves me that I may not spare him to you longer than the night, but war is cruel at its best."

She stood like any statue done in cold Carrara while he spoke; and when she made no sign he gave the word to recommit me.

"Take him away, Lieutenant Tybee, and see he has a bribe-proof man this time to keep him company. Madam Ireton, I'll put you on your honor: you may have access to him, but there must be no messages carried in or out. To your quarters, gentlemen. We must ride far and hard to-morrow."

When his final word had set her free, my frozen maiden came to life and ran to throw herself in helpless sobbings, not upon her father, as you would think, but upon the good priest. And it was Father Matthieu who led her, still crying softly, out of the throng and up the low stair; and now I marked that all the rough soldiery stood aside and made way for her with never a man among them to scoff or sneer or point a gibe.

At her going, Tybee drew his sword and cut the cord that bound me.

"These youngling cubs are over-cautious, Captain Ireton. We shall not make it harder for each other than we must," he said, with bluff good nature. And then: "Will you lead the way to your room, sir?"--this to give the youngling cub another lesson, I suppose.

I walked beside him to the stair, and when I stumbled, being weak and spent, he took my arm and steadied me, and I did think it kindly done. At my own door he gave me precedence again, saying, with a touch of the grateful Old World courtesy, "After you, sir," and standing aside to let me enter first. When we were both within he touched upon the colonel's mandate.

"I must obey my orders, Captain Ireton, but by your good leave I shall not lock you up with any trooper; I'll stay with you myself."

I thought this still more kindly than aught he had done before, and so I told him. But he put it off lightly.

"'Tis little enough any one can do for you, my friend, but I will do that little as I can. You are like to have a visitor, I take it; if you have, I'm sure 'twill be a comfort if your body-guard can be stone blind and deaf."

So saying, he dragged the big wicker chair into the window-bay, planted himself deep within it with his back to all the room, and so left me to my own devices.

Being spent enough to sleep beneath the shadow of a gibbet, I threw myself full-length upon the bed and was, I think, adrift upon the ebb tide of exhaustion and forgetfulness when once again the shifting of the wooden door-bar roused me. I rose up quickly, but Tybee was before me. There was some low-voiced conference at the door; then Tybee came to me.

"'Tis Mr. Gilbert Stair," he said. "He has permission from the colonel and insists that he must see you _solus_. I'll take your word and leave you, if you like."

At first I hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow in the morning.

"Yes, yes; for God's sake let him in, Mr. Tybee!" I burst out. "I am fair crazed with weariness, and had forgot. 'Tis most important, I do assure you."

The thing was done at once, and before I knew it I was alone with the old man who, though he was my supplanter, was also Margery's father. He entered cautiously, shielding his bedroom candle with his hand and peering over it to make me out, as if his venturing in were not unperilous. And I marked that when he put the candle down upon the table, he edged away and felt behind him for the door as if to make sure of his retreat in case of need.

"Sit down, Captain Ireton; sit down, I beg of you," he said, in his thin, rasping treble. And when I had obeyed: "I think you must know what I've come for, Captain Ireton?"

I said I could guess; and he began again, volubly now, as if to have it over in the shortest space.

"'Twas not a gentlemanly thing for you to do, Captain Ireton--this marrying of a foolish girl out of hand while you were here a guest; and as for the priest that did it, I--I'll have him hanged before the army leaves, I promise you. But now 'tis done, I hope ye're prepared to make the best of it?"

I saw at once that his daughter had not yet confided in him; that he was still entangled in my lie. So I thought it well to probe him deeper while I might.

"What would you call 'the best' if I may ask?" said I, growing the cooler with some better seeing of the way ahead.

"The marriage settlements!" he cried shrilly, coming to the point at once, as any miser would. "'Tis the merest matter of form, as ye may say, for your title to Appleby Hundred is well burnt out, I promise you. But for the decent look of it you might make over your quitclaim to your wife."

"Aye, truly; so I might."

"And so you should, sir; that you should, ye miserable, spying runag"--he choked and coughed behind his hand and then began again without the epithets. "'Tis the very least ye can do for her now, when you have the rope fair around your curs--ahem--your--your rebel neck. Only for the form's sake, to be sure, ye understand, for she'd inherit after you in any case."

I saw his drift at last, and, not caring to spare him, sped the shaft of truth and let it find the joint in his harness.

"'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not my wife."

If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.

"Wha--what's that ye say?" he piped in shrillest cadence. "Not married? Then you--you--"

"I lied to save her honor--that was all. A wife might do the thing she did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see and hear."

For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck with a mortal sickness.

"I think--I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.

"Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can pay," said I.

"Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now--"

"You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly."

Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.

"Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?"

"Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River, and a major in the Virginia line," I answered, wondering how my cousin once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next question dispelled the mystery.

"If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?"

"As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to devise."

"True; and yet"--he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy.

"Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair," said I.

"'Tis this," he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. "You've claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think--I think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth."

If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to cut the knot of all entanglements.

As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. Dick would love her none the less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a while.

So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you, I gave my host his answer.

"I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If you can make your daughter understand--"

"The jade will do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot. And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her legatee residuary?"

At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his title to my father's lands--a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty miser.

"I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean," I said. "But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event."

"True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form." He rose and hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand played a rattling tattoo on the latch. "I--I'll go and have the papers drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word that you will sign them?"

"Aye; they shall be signed."

He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own communings.

These were not altogether of assurance. Though I had promised readily enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he said--that she would do as she was bid--I thought I knew her temper well enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she put her will against the world, the world would never move her.

'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at the door I stood apart and turned my back.

When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a parchment that might have been a ducal title deed for size, stood Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the corner Tybee stood to keep the door.

I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them, strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last, under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest, looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.

It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature. Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.

"I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this matter ripens further, Mr. Stair," I said.

My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.

"What has your father told you, Margery?" I asked.

"He tells me nothing that I care to know."

"But he has told you what you must do?"

"Yes." She looked with eyes that saw me not.

"And you are here to do it of your own free will?"

"No."

"Yet it must be done."

"So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die."

"'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some short while till you can change it for a better."

Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.

"Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?"

"No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way."

"See what comes of tampering with the truth," she said, and I could see her short lip curl with scorn. "Why should you lie and lie again, when any one could see that it must come to this--or worse?"

"I saw it not," I said. "But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."

"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir, when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"

"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."

"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing, to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'? You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"

"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."

She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it cut me like a knife.

"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and they are waiting."

I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.

I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never thought to smile again.

"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own house. Give me the pen."

'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.

When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him; the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger and made me take and use it.

And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his benediction. All through this farce--which was in truth the grimmest of all tragedies--my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign to me.

You'd guess that I would take it hard--her leaving of me thus, as I made sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my mother's dying love.

XII

HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS

Though all the western quarter of the sky was night-black and spangled yet with stars, the dawn was graying slowly in the east when Tybee roused me.

"They have not come for you as yet," he said; "so I took time by the forelock and passed the word for breakfast. It heartens a man to eat a bite and drink a cup of wine just on the battle's edge. Will you sit and let me serve you, Captain Ireton?"

"That I will not," said I; adding that I would blithely share the breakfast with him. Whereat he laughed and clipt my hand, and swore I was a true soldier and a brave gentleman to boot.

So we sat and hobnobbed at the table; and Tybee lighted all the remnant candle-ends, and broached the wine and pledged me in a bumper before we fell to upon the cold haunch of venison.

My summons came when we had shared the heel-tap of the bottle. It was my toast to this kind-hearted youngster, and we drained it standing what time the stair gave back the tread of marching men. Tybee crashed his glass upon the floor and wrung my hand across the table.

"Good by, my Captain; they have come. God damn me, sir, I'll swear they might do worse than let you go, for all your spying. You've carried off this matter with the lady as a gentleman should, and whilst I live, she shall not lack a friend. If you have any word to leave for her--"

I shook my head. "No," said I; then, on second thought: "And yet there is a word. You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the lady?"

"Surely; 'twas plain enough for any one to see."

"Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to Richard Jennifer. He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in a formal way, and that to save the lady's honor."

The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was lifted and my reprieve was at an end.

Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier hangmen marched me off without ado. The house and all within it seemed yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees. In shortest space we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.

'Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day wakes wherein it must be shuffled off! As a soldier must, I thought I had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it upon my sleeve in battle. But now, when I was marching forth to this cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all nature cried aloud to me.

The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup abrim and running over with the wine of life. I thought the cool, moist air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature's garb had never seemed so blithe. There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded prospect. The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us as we passed. And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had the scent of us.

A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.

The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the volleying would not wake the house.

So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and reply came out into an open grove of oaks: then I knew where they had brought me--and why. 'Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle with the baronet. On its farther confines two horses nibbled rein's-length at the grass, with Falconnet's trooper serving-man to hold them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my enemy was waiting.

'Twas all prearranged; for when the ensign had saluted he marched his men a little way apart and drew them up in line with muskets ported. But at a sign from Falconnet, two of the men broke ranks and came to strap me helpless with their belts. I smiled at that, and would not miss the chance to jeer.

"You are a sorry coward, Captain Falconnet, as bullies ever are," I said. "Would not your sword suffice against a man with empty hands?"

He passed the taunt in silence, and when the men had left me, said: "I have come to speed your parting, Captain Ireton. You are a thick-headed, witless fool, as you have always been; yet since you've blundered into serving me, I would not grudge the time to come and thank you."

"I serve you?" I cried. "God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a carving tool!"

He laughed softly. "Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns," he retorted. "And yet I say you've served me."

"Tell me how, in God's name, that I may not die with that sin unrepented of."

"Oh, in many small ways, but chiefly in this affair with the little lady of Appleby."

"Never!" I denied. "So far as decent speech could compass it, I have ever sought to tell her what a conscienceless villain you are."

He laughed again at that.

"You know women but indifferently, my Captain, if you think to breach a love affair by a cannonade of hard words. But I am in no humor to dispute with you. You have lost, and I have won; and, were I not here to come between, you'd look your last upon the things of earth in shortest order, I do assure you."

"You?--you come between?" I scoffed. "You are all kinds of a knave, Sir Francis, but your worst enemy never accused you of being a fool!"

There was a look in his eyes that I could never fathom.

"You are bitter hard, John Ireton--bitter and savage and unforgiving. You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have you never a touch of human kindliness in you?"

To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.

So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and--"

"Tush!" said he. "That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it now is but a mask."

"For what?" I asked.

"For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not, as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me."

"But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot and ran me through," I countered.

"Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life, and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might."

"No; you reserved me for this."

He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.

"You forced my hand, John Ireton," he said, speaking low that the others might not hear. "You had her ear from day to day and used your privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival--"

I laughed, and sanity began to come again. "Make an end of it," I said. "I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you."

For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's headquarters in South Carolina.

"Can you read it?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded."

"To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?"

"No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?"

"No," said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.

"He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to 'list in your old service."

"I would not take it--at your hands or his."

"You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines."

"Make an end," I said again. "I understand you will obey his Lordship's order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you have me do?"

"A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my very good friend."

I let that go uncontradicted.

"His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make it better," he went on.

This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.

"Go on," said I.

"Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor."

"Is that all?" I asked.

"No; after that our ways must lie apart--or yours and Margery's, at all events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the ensign."

"And if I refuse?"

He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.

"If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all." So much he said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I think, he spoke the simple truth. "God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's hell to have her!"

I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why he was come upon this errand.

"So?" said I. "Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?" 'Twas but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.

He swore a sneering oath. "So the priest carried tales, did he? Well, make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from his bed and hanged like a dog."

I smiled again. "'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy."

"Bah!" he scoffed. "That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I had better information."

"A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward, some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another, we made a sober truth of it."

I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake it made me shudder with abhorrence.

"You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!" Then he wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. "Belt him to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting over-long."

They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range, a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets killed the senses.

But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside--a glance that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare--showed me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.

What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen--all this befell in less than any time the written words can measure.

I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade; was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what followed after.

It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and his great hands clutching at the empty air.

I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.

I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his horse-holding trooper at his heels.

And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily; and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.

XIII

IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS

As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving sense.

Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this agreed-on rallying point.

Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for British jaws to masticate.

They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward show among them of the sterling metal underneath.

They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.

Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain persevering sort.

"Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?" drawled one of them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went on behind it. "I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful o' lead to chaw on."

I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.

When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney--he was the limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind--gripped my hand and gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.

"My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little; though as for that, we should both thank the Indian." At which he looked around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. "Where is the chief, Ephraim?"--this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically reloading his long rifle.

"He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking, immejitly, _if_ not sooner."

Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.

"'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba," he said; "one of the friendlies. He was out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that to our little ambushment--"

"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba: is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a little cadger."

At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage, as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his firelock and stood before me defenseless.

Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when my father had found this young savage lying in the forest, plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life and earned an Indian friendship.

"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for the day's march.

"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us," he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from the North."

"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.

He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting frontier, had matriculated early.

"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."

"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.

"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.

The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.

"By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in wildcats; and I can do it now, _if_ not sooner!" he shrilled. "Come on, you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied--"

Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.

For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look behind him.

Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might have done.

"Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said. "There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or standing against trained troops in open field--" He shrugged again and turned to tighten his saddle-girth.

"I see," said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford, who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment thereabouts.

"You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain Forney," said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had overheard.