Chapter 2

virtue in an Indian barbecue."

At this Richard could hold in no longer.

"Curse you!" he gritted. "Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair to draw us out of hiding?"

"Truly," said this arch-fiend, smiling again. "Most unluckily for you, you both stood in my way,--you see I am speaking of it now as a thing past,--and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in."

"Have done!" choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. "Give place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!"

"At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while ago." And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away, forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.

The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.

"Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from my poor Dick.

His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but upon his malady, the tertian fever.

"Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and that will break my heart!"

Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me gasp and strangle at the finish.

For a little time after the sucking in of that first smoke-breath--nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to die by fire--I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by anticipation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely troubled.

So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.

'Twas Dick's voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.

"One word, Jack, before we go--go to our own place. He said--he said she would be free to--to marry him. Tell me ... O God in Heaven!"

His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of flame, yet I must needs add to it.

"Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you'll forgive--"

Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon by smothering us out of hand.

With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful grimaces of the death throe.

You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away for very pity's sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames, as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.

There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering triumph.

Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze swept through the tree-tops.

So now I would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind; a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the dulled senses once more keenly alert.

With the wind came the rain, a passing summer-night's shower of great drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it, came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the savanna--this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain's whistle shrilling the assembly.

While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand plucked me out of the scorching hell-pit.

If I did aught to help it was all mechanical. I do remember dimly some fierce struggle to free my legs from the blazing tangle; this, and the swelling sob of joy at the sight of the faithful Catawba hacking at Dick's lashings and dragging him also free of the fire. And you may believe the welcome tears came to ease the pain of my seared eyes when my poor lad--I had thought him gone past human help--took two staggering steps and flung his arms about my neck.

Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock like that of an earthquake.

The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.

But Dick hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself down, crying as if his heart would break.

"O God! she's lost, she's lost!--and I have missed the chance to die with her or for her!"

XXX

HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES

However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer's grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it, loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon Dick with pullings and haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very stiffening rigor of despair.

So, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard's afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be denied.

"Go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "I must go back. Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright. 'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say."

The Catawba grunted his disgust.

"Captain Jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. What think? White squaw _yonder_--no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the direction of the stricken camp.

Richard spun around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. "Then she is alive and safe?" he burst out. "Speak, friend, whilst I leave the breath in you to do it!"

"Ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer's vehemence or by the dog-like shake. "What for Captain Jennif' think papoose thinks 'bout the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw _firs'_; _then_ blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif' and Captain Long-knife if can. Heap do firs' thing _firs'_, and las' thing _las'_. Wah!"

It was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for Dick; and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.

So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage. And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, Dick was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a dead weight between us.

'Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful Catawba.

None the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their wire-like needles under foot.

By this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "Well, now; the Lord be praised! if here ain't the whole enduring--"

What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For now my poor Dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.

"Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel, cruel!" Then she lashed out at us. "Why don't you strike a light? How can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"

"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; "'tis only that the fever has overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the fire-scorching."

"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."

We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel of a great king's musket--one of his reavings from the enemy--soon had a pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double rescue from the old hunter.

Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the Indian camp at our torture spectacle.

Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they set to work.

With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream; the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.

The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late jailers to the shelter of the wood.

Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.

The outworking of the _coup de main_ was a triumph for the old borderer's shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by the firing and the shrilling of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of Dick and me.

Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for, after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the grass in a little glade; and with this mount for Margery and her tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.

All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'Twas altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how I did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.

It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates the pressing question of the moment.

"As I take it, we may not linger here," I said. "Have you marked out a line of retreat?"

The old borderer was busied with his loot of the Indian camp--'twas not in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been for time. In the raffle of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and warrior finery, he came upon my good old blade and Richard's great claymore--trophies claimed by the head men of the Cherokees after our taking, as we made no doubt.

"Found 'em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the Great Bear," said the hunter, and then with grim humor: "'Lowed to keep 'em to ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up in a fiery chariot, like the good old Elijah." The weapons disposed of, he made answer to my query. "Ez for making tracks immejitly, _if_ not sooner, I allow there ain't no two notions about that. But I'm dad-daddled if I know which-a-way to put out, Cap'n John, and that's the gospil fact."

"Why not strike for the Great Trace, and so go back the way the powder convoy came?" I asked.

It could be done, he said, but the hazard was great. 'Twas out of all reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to carry the news of the earthquake massacre. That news once cried abroad in the near-by Cowee Towns, the entire Tuckasege nation would turn out to run us down. Moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only practicable horse-path leading eastward.

"Ez I'm telling you right now, Cap'n John, we made one more blunder in this here onfall of our'n, owin' to our having ne'er a seventh son of a seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead. Where we flashed in the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and Cap'n Dick got in. Ever' last one of 'em able to crawl is a-making straight for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do 'em like the Gileadites did the men o' Ephraim at the passages o' the Jordan."

Fresh as I was from the torture fire, I could not forbear a shudder at this old man's savagery.

"Kill them in cold blood?" I would say.

"Anan?" he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and I let the matter rest. He was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is concerned.

But when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to the eastward flitting by way of the Great Trace. To the west and south there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the Watauga. I asked if we might hope to reach this.

"'Tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e'enabout the mountainousest patch o' land that ever laid out o' doors," was the hunter's reply. "And there ain't ne'er a deer-track, ez I knows on, to p'int the way."

"Then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the Tuckaseges," said I.

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXXI

IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What did you dream?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nay, rather, who are you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The same," I replied.

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

"I have that honor."

He gave me his hand most cordially.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Very well, indeed."

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

"Good! an ambush," said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well?" said I, when he paused.

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

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

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

I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.

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

XXXII

IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And with this cruel word she was gone.

XXXIII

IN WHICH I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So; some one has betrayed me?"

She nodded.

"Do you know who it was?"

She nodded again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I say you shall not go!"

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

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

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

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

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

XXXIV

HOW I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN

The room in which I found myself was the guest-chamber, furnished luxuriously, for that day and place, in French-fashioned mahogany and gilt. The bed was high and richly canopied, as befitted a peer's resting place; there was a square of Turkish drugget on the floor, a cheerful fire burning in the chimney arch, and on the small table whereat the occupant of the guest-room had lately breakfasted, a goodly display of the Ireton silver.

My Lord was busy at his writing-desk when I entered; but when he looked up I saw the light of instant recognition in his eye. Never, I think, did another prisoner at the bar strive harder to read his sentence in his judge's eyes than I did in that moment of suspense. I liked not much the look he gave me; but his greeting was affable and kindly enough.

"Ah, Captain Ireton; 'tis you, is it? We are well met, at last. They told me you were gone to join the rebels, did they not?"

Here was an opening for a bold man, and in a flash I came to the right-about, choked down the defiance I had meant to hurl at him, and took quick counsel of cool audacity.

"Indeed, my Lord, I know not what they have told you. In times past, the king had no truer soldier than I; and when I came across seas 'twas not to fight against him. But that I have not joined the rebels is no fault of certain of your Lordship's officers."

"Say you so? But how is this? Surely I am not mistaken. I could be certain Colonel Tarleton reported your taking as a spy, and his trying of you. And was there not something about a rescue at the last moment by a band of these border bravos? But stay; let us have the colonel's story at first hands. Have the goodness to ring the bell for me, will you, Captain?"

The crisis was come. A pull at the bell-cord would summon the guard, and the guard would be sent after Colonel Tarleton. Well, said the demon Despair, 'tis time you were gone to make room for Richard Jennifer; and I laid a hand upon the tasseled rope. But when I would have rung, all the man-pride, of race and of soldier training, rose up to bid me fight for space to strike one good blow in freedom's cause by way of leave-taking.

So, as it had been an afterthought, I said: "A word further with you first, my Lord, and then, if you please, I will call the guard. All you remember is true, save as to the principal fact. So far from being a spy in intent, or even a partizan of either side, I was at the time but newly come into the province, knowing little of the cause of quarrel and caring still less. But Captain Falconnet and Colonel Tarleton did their earnest best to make a rebel of me out of hand."

"Ah? But the proof of all this, Captain Ireton."

"The best I can offer is the present fact of my coming to place myself at your Lordship's disposal, being moved thereto by your Lordship's own desire expressed in an order sent some weeks since to Sir Francis Falconnet."

"So?--then you knew of that order?"

"Captain Falconnet showed it to me after I was condemned and the firing squad was drawn up to snuff me out."

My Lord Charles gave me the courtier smile that so endeared him to his soldiers,--he was well-loved of his men,--and bade me sit.

"The plot thickens, as Mr. Richardson would say. Let me have your story, Captain Ireton. I would rejoice to know why Captain Sir Francis Falconnet saw fit to disobey his orders."

I was clear of the lee shore and the breakers at last, but I was fain to believe that not Machiavelli himself could hope to weather the storm in the open. How much or how little did Lord Cornwallis remember of Colonel Tarleton's report? How explicit had that report been?--was there any mention in it of my eavesdropping at the conference between Captain John Stuart and the baronet; of my attempt to warn the over-mountain men against the Indian-arming? Could I hope to tell his Lordship a tale so near the truth as to be unassailable by Tarleton and his officers, by Gilbert Stair and the spiteful little pettifogger, and yet so deftly garbled as to keep my neck out of the halter for the time being?

All these questions thronged upon me as a mob to pull cool reason from her seat, and I could only play the part of the trapped rat and snap back at them. Yet my Lord Cornwallis was waiting for his answer, and a single moment's hesitation might breed suspicion.

You must forgive me, my dears, if I confess it beyond me to set down here in measured words the tale I told his Lordship. A lie is a lie, be it told in never so good a cause; a thing deplorable and not to be glozed over or boasted of after the fact. So I beg you to let these quibblings to which I was driven rest in oblivion, figuring to yourselves that I used all the truth I dared, and that I strove through it all not wholly to sink the gentleman and the man of honor in the spy.

'Twas but a bridge of glass when all was said; a bridge that carried me safely over for the moment into my Lord's confidence, yet one which a pebble flung by any one of a dozen hands might shiver in the dropping of an eyelid.

"Truly, you have had a most romantic experience," said his Lordship, when I had made an end. Then he lay back in his chair and laughed till the stout body of him shook again. "And all about a little wench of the provincials. Well, well; Sir Francis was always a sad dog with the women. But all this was in the early summer, you say; where have you been since?"

Here was a chance for more romancing, this time of a sort less dangerous. So I drew breath and plunged again, telling how I had been carried off by my captor-rescuers; how I had fallen into the hands of the Indians--not all of whom, I would remind his Lordship, were friendly to the king; and lastly how I had but lately escaped from the mountain fastnesses back of Major Ferguson's camp at Gilbert Town. At this point my Lord interrupted the tale-telling.

"So you know of the major and his doings? I would you had brought me late news of him. 'Tis a week since his last courier reached us."

This was the moment for the playing of my trump card--the only one I held. I rose, bowed, took from my pocket that other letter given me by Colonel Davie and handed it to his Lordship. 'Twas Major Ferguson's last report, intercepted by one of Davie's vigilant scouting parties.

"Ah!" said my Lord; and I strolled to the window whilst he read the letter.

When I turned to front him again he was all affability; and I knew I was safe--for the time, at least.

"The major commends you highly as a good man and a true, Captain Ireton," he said, and truly the letter did contain a warm-hearted commendation of "the bearer," whose name, for safety's sake, was omitted; and not only this, but the writer desired to have his man back again. Then my Lord added: "You are here to take your old service again, I assume?"

I hesitated. There be things that even a spy may balk at; and the taking of the oath of allegiance to the other side I conceived to be one of them. So I said:

"I have worn many uniforms since I doffed that of King George, my Lord, and--"

He laughed cheerily. "'But me no buts,' Captain Ireton; once an Englishman, always an Englishman, you know. I shall assign you to duty in my own family."

At this I made a bold stroke. "Let it be then as an officer of her Apostolic Majesty's service, and your Lordship's guest for the time. Believe me, it is thus I may best serve your--ah--the cause."

"As how?" he would ask.

I smiled and touched the braided jacket of my hussar uniform.

"As an Austrian officer on a tour of observation in the campaign I may go and come where others may not, and see and hear things which your Lordship may wish to know. Does your Lordship take me?"

He laughed and rose and clapped me on the shoulder.

"You may call the guard now, Captain, and I will turn you over--not to a firing squad, but to the tender mercies of our old rascal host who is a 'trimmer' of the devil's own school. If he tries to screw a penny's pay out of you, as he is like to, put him in arrest."

"It is your Lordship's meaning that I should be quartered here?--in this house?" I gasped.

"And why not? Ah, my good Captain of Hussars, I have made you my honorary aide-de-camp and a member of my family so that I may keep an eye on you. _Comprenez-vous?_"

He said it with a laugh and another hearty hand-clap on my shoulder, and I would fain take it for a jest. Yet there be playful gibes that hint at gibbets; and I may confess to you here, my dears, that I left my Lord's presence with the conviction that my acquittal was but a reprieve conditioned upon the best of future good behavior. So it took another turn of the audacity screw to tune me up for the battle royal with Gilbert Stair and the pettifogger, Owen Pengarvin.

XXXV

IN WHICH I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE

With the house guard for a guide I found my host in a box-like den below stairs; a room with a writing-table, two chairs and a great iron strong-box for its scanty furnishings.

The old man was sitting at the table when I looked in, his long nose buried in a musty parchment deed. The light from the single small window was none too good, but it sufficed to help him recognize me at a glance, despite the hussar uniform. In a twinkling he put the breadth of the oaken table between us, hurled the parchment deed into the open strong-box, slammed to the cover and gave a shrill alarm.

"Ho! you devils without, there! Here he is--I have him! Help! Murder!"

The guard, a burly, bearded Darmstädter, turned on his heel and stood at attention in the doorway, looking stolidly for his orders, not to the shrilling master of the house, but to the man who wore a uniform.

"'Tis naught," I said, speaking in German. "He mistakes me for a _rittmeister_ of the rebels. _Verstehen Sie?_"

The soldier saluted, wheeled and vanished; and I sat down to wait till the old man's outcry should pause for lack of breath. When my chance came, I said:

"Calm yourself, Mr. Stair. You are in no present danger greater than that which you may bring upon yourself. Blot out all the past, if you please, and consider me now as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military family seeking quarters in your house by my Lord's express command."

"Quarters in my house?--ye're a damned rebel spy!" he cried. "I'll denounce ye to my Lord for what ye are. Ho! ye rascals, I say!"

"Peace!" I commanded, sternly; "this is but child's folly. No man in the British army would arrest me at your behest. Ring the bell and summon your factor lawyer. I would have a word or two in private with both of you."

He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great beads on his wrinkled forehead.

"D' ye--d' ye mean to kill us both?" he gasped.

"Not if I can help it. But some better understanding is needful, and we will have it here and now, once for all. Will you ring, or shall I?"

He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him. A grinning black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond giving the order, I gave it myself.

"Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly. Tell him Mr. Stair wants him."

There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came. Being but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have fled when he saw me. But I caught him by the collar and sent him scurrying around the table to keep his master company.

"Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at Appleby Hundred some weeks since?" I demanded. "Speak out, and quickly."

'Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap blindly in despair.

"You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you," he gritted out.

"On your information?"

"On mine and Mr. Stair's."

"Ye lie!" shrieked the miser. "I tell't ye to keep hands off, ye bletherin' little deevil, ye!"

"Never mind," said I; "what's done is done. But it must be undone, and that swiftly and thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some story that will hold water and lose no time about it. Do you understand?"

Seeing he was not to be put to the wall and spitted on the spot, the lawyer recovered himself.

"'Tis not the criminal at the bar who dictates terms, Captain Ireton," he said, with his hateful smirk. "You are under sentence of death, and that by a court lawful enough in war time."

"You refuse?" I said.

He shrugged.

"Speaking for myself, I shall leave no stone unturned to bring you to book, Captain,--when it suits my purpose."

I was loath to go to extremities with either of them; but my bridge of glass must be defended at all hazards.

"You would best reconsider, Mr. Pengarvin. At this present moment I am of my Lord Cornwallis's military family and I have his confidence. A word from me will put you both in arrest as persons whose loyalty in times past has been somewhat more than blown upon."

"Bah!" said the pettifogger. "Bluster is a good dog, but Holdfast is the better. You can prove nothing, as you well know. Moreover, with your own neck in a noose you dare not mess and meddle with other men's affairs."

"Dare not, you say? I'll tell you what I may dare, Master Attorney. If you are not disposed to meet me half way in this matter, I shall go to my Lord, tell him how I have been cheated out of my estate, declare the marriage with Mistress Margery, and see that you get your just deserts. And you may rest assured that this soldier-earl will right me, come what may."

'Twas a bold stroke, the boldest of any I had made that morning; but I was wholly unprepared for its effect upon the lawyer. His rage was like that of some venomous little animal, a thing to make an onlooker shudder and draw back.

"Never!" he hissed; "never, I say! I'll kill her first--I'll--" He choked in the very exuberance of his malignance, and his face was like the face of a man in a fit.

'Twas then that I saw the pointing of his villainy and knew what Margery had meant when she said that for reasons of his own he was holding my betrayal in abeyance. He was Falconnet's successor and my rival. This little reptile aspired to be the master of my father's acres and the husband of my dear lady! And his holding off from denouncing me at once was also explained. Taking it for granted that the wife would bargain for the husband's life, he had made a whip of his leniency to flog Margery into subjection.

My determination was taken upon the instant. There was no safety for Margery whilst this plotting pettifogger was at large, and I stepped to the door and called the sentry. The Darmstädter came back and I pointed to the lawyer. Then, indeed, the furious little madman found his tongue and shrilled out his defiance.

"Curse you!" he yelled. "I'll be quits with you for this, Master Spy! 'Tis your hearing now, but mine will come, and you shall hang like a dog! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth--I'll--"

I made a sign and the soldier brought his musket into play and pricked his prisoner with the bayonet in token that time pressed. So we were rid of the lawyer in bodily presence, though I could hear his snarlings and spittings as the big Darmstädter ran him out at the bayonet's point.

During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood apart, watchful but trembling. When we were alone I said:

"Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your house, as a member of my Lord's family. Lead on, if you please, and I'll follow."

He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and catching at the balustrade to steady himself as we ascended. The room he gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or a look behind him.

The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in suddenly when I set my shoulder to it. There was a quick little cry, half of anger, half of affright, from within. I drew back hastily, with a muttered curse upon the old man's spite, and in the act my spur caught the door and slammed it shut behind me.

For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had shown me to my lady's chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off, before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.

XXXVI

HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS

If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my lady's flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door. Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, "Fie, for shame, Captain Ireton!--and you would call yourself a gentleman!" to set me afire with prinklings of abashment.

What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again, and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the best of us.

"How are you better than the man you warned me of?" she cried. And then, in a tempest of grief: "Oh! you would not leave me the respect I bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it under foot!"

Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty, heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better right to look upon her thus?

So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to look about him for his mate.

Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to me.... Ah, God! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I would do.

"Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!" she pleaded. "Think what it will mean to you, and how you will loathe me and yourself as well when this madness is overpast! Oh, go; go quickly, lest I, too, forget--"

And so it was that I found sudden strength to turn and leave her kneeling there; turned to grope blindly for the door with all the pains of hell aflame within me.

For now I had put honor under foot; now I knew that I had truly earned her scorn and loathing. I could no longer plead that I was the puppet of fate flung against my will between this maiden and my dear lad. I was the wilful offender; false to my love, false to my friend, a recreant to every oath wherewith I had bound myself to be true and loyal to these two.

With such a flaming sword to drive me forth, I stumbled from the room, thinking only how I should quickest rid me of myself. Hastening to my garret sleeping-place I buckled on my sword, found my shako, and went straight to my Lord's bed-chamber. My rap at the door went unanswered, and a broad-shouldered young fellow in a lieutenant's uniform, lounging on a settle in the clock landing of the stair, told me Lord Cornwallis was gone out.

I was face to face with this young lieutenant before I recognized him; being so bent upon haste I should have passed him on the landing without a second glance had he not risen to grip me by the shoulders.

"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "is it thus you pass an old friend without a word, Captain Ireton?"

'Twas my good death-watch; that Lieutenant Tybee of the light-horse who had sunk the British officer in the man in that trying night at Appleby Hundred. I returned his hearty greeting as well as I might, and would have explained my present state and standing but that I was loath to lie to him. But as to this, he saved me the shame of it.

"I could have sworn you were no rebel, Captain Ireton; indeed, I made bold to say as much to our colonel, after it was all over. I told him a soft word or two would have won you back to your old service. You see I knew better than the others what lay beneath all your madnesses that night."

"You knew somewhat, but not all," I said; and thereupon, lest he should involve me deeper and detain me longer when I was athirst to be gone, I hastened to ask where I might hope to find his Lordship and Colonel Tarleton.

"'Tis the hour for parade; you will find them at the camp," he replied. And then, out of the honest English heart of him: "Have you made your peace, Captain? Do you need a friend to go with you?"

I said I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little while before; that by my Lord's appointment I was now a sort of honorary aide-de-camp.

"Good!" said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact. Then he roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below: "A mount for Captain Ireton--and be swift about it!"

He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty God-speed. Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest quench the fires of it.

The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the near-at-hand camp of an armed host. Being but a halt-point _en route_ in the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.

I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary's quarters and making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy's use of them. Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait my opportunity.

The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.

At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves of steel at the command to halt and port arms.

What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this well-trained host, armed--as we were not--with the deadly bayonet, and moving as one man at the word of command? Not the bravest home guard or militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.

Riding presently around the field to be the nearer to the general when my time should come, I missed the mark completely. It so chanced that as the parade was ended my Lord and his suite were at the extreme right; and when the regiments broke ranks I was forced to skirt the entire camp to come into the road. By this time those I sought were gone into the town, so I must needs turn about and follow, with the thing I had to say still unspoken.

I need not drag you back and forth with me on the search I made to find Lord Cornwallis again. 'Tis enough to say that after missing him here and there, I ran him to earth at the court house, where, it was told me, my Lord was sitting in council with his staff officers.

Thinking it worse than useless to try to force my way into the council chamber, I waited in the raff of soldiery without, cursing the delay which gave my despairing resolution time to cool. When I had closed the door of my dear lady's chamber behind me I was resolved to fling myself upon that fate which needed but a word from me to make my calling and election to a gibbet swift and sure. Had I found my Lord Cornwallis in his bed-room the word would have been spoken; but now the iron of resolution cooled in spite of me.

'Twas not that I was less willing to pay the price of expiation; that must be done in any case. But I had seen the enemy, and all the soldier in me rebelled at the thought of dying like a noosed bullock in the shambles. Could I but strike that one good blow.

The old court house of our greater Mecklenburg was such as some of you may remember; a stout wooden building raised upon brick pillars to leave a story underneath. In the time of the British occupation this lower story served as a market house, and the public entrance to the court room above was reached by steps on the outside. In my boyhood days this outer stair was the only one; but now in wandering aimlessly through the market-place beneath I found another flight in a corner; the "jury stair," they called it, since it provided the means of egress from the jury box above.

The sight of this inner stair set me plotting. Could I make use of it to come unseen into the council chamber of Lord Cornwallis and his officers?

The market-place was well thronged with venders and soldier buyers; the patriotic Mecklenburgers were not averse to the turning of an honest penny upon the needs of their oppressors, as it seemed. I watched my chance, and when there were no prying eyes to mark it, made the dash up the steps.

Happily for the success of the adventure there was an angle in the narrow stair to hide me whilst I lifted the trap door in the court-room floor a scant half-inch and got my bearings. As I had hoped, the trap opened behind the jury box, and I was able to raise it cautiously and so to draw myself up into the room above, unseen and unheard.

A peep around the corner of the high jury stalls showed me my Lord and his suite gathered about the lawyers' table in front of the bar. Of the staff I recognized only Stedman, the commissary-general; Tarleton, looking something the worse for his late illness; Major Hanger, his second in command, and the young Irishman, Lord Rawdon.

At the moment of my espial, Cornwallis was speaking, and I drew back to listen, well enough content to be in earshot. For if my good angel had timed my coming I could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.

"What we have to consider now is how best to reach Ferguson with an express instantly," his Lordship was saying. "This rising of the over-mountain men is likely to prove a serious matter--not only for the major, but for the king's cause in the two provinces. Lacking positive orders to the contrary, Ferguson will fight--we all know that; and if he should be defeated 'twill hopelessly undo his work among the border loyalists and set us back another twelvemonth."

"Then your Lordship will order him to come in with what he has?" said a voice which I knew for Colonel Tarleton's.

"Instanter, had I a sure man to send."

"Pshaw! I can find you a hundred amongst the late royalist recruits." 'Twas young Lord Rawdon who said this.

"Damn them!" said his Lordship shortly; "I would sooner trust this new aide of mine. He comes straight from the major and can find his way back again."

Tarleton laughed. "I fear we shall never agree upon him, my Lord. I know not how he has made his peace with you, but I do assure you he is as great a rascal as ever went unhung. 'Tis true, as you say, I did not go into the particulars; but were Captain Stuart or Sir Francis Falconnet here, either of them would convince your Lordship in a twinkling."

There was silence for a little space following the colonel's denunciation of me, and then my Lord broke it to say: "I may not be so credulous as you think, Colonel. Rebel spy or true-blue loyalist, he is safe enough for the present. In the meantime in this matter of reaching Ferguson we may make good use of him."

"In what manner, your Lordship?" asked one whose voice I did not recognize.

"He has come straight from Major Ferguson, as I say; and, loyalist or rebel, he can find his way back to Gilbert Town."

"But you'll never be trusting him with despatches!" said Lord Rawdon.

"There is no need to trust him. He can be given the despatches with some hint of their purport, and of how much the king's cause will profit by their safe delivery."

Again a silence fell upon the group around the lawyers' table, and then some one--'twas Major Hanger, as I thought--said: "'Tis an unread riddle for me as yet, my Lord."

Cornwallis laughed. "Where are your wits this morning, gentlemen? If he be loyal and true, the despatches will go safe enough. If, on the other hand, he be a rebel and a spy, he will doubtless tamper with them; but in that case he will none the less ride straight enough to Major Ferguson's headquarters in the West."

"H'm; your Lordship is still too deep for me," said Tarleton's second in command. "If he be a rebel and a spy, why, in God's name, should he carry your Lordship's letters to any but some rag-tag colonel of his own kidney?"

My Lord laughed again. "Truly, Major, you should go to a dame's school and learn diplomacy. If we tell him beforehand what our object is, how could any rebel of them all defeat it more surely than by going to Ferguson with a garbled message that would make him stand and fight a losing battle?"

"But, my Lord--the risk!" cut in the commissary-general.

"There need be none. An hour after he sets out we shall send a mounted detail after him with an Indian tracker to nose out his trail. The lieutenant in command will carry duplicate despatches. At the worst, Ireton will guide these followers to Ferguson's rendezvous; and, so far as we know, he is the only man who knows exactly where to find the major."

I had heard enough. Under cover of the chorus of bravos raised by Lord Cornwallis's explication of his plot within a plot, I lifted the trap-door and made my exit as noiselessly as I had come.

Guessing that no time would be lost in putting the plan into action, I made haste to be found inquiring hither and yon for the commander-in-chief when my Lord and his suite came down the outer stair; and when we were met I was quickly told of my assignment to courier duty.

"Make your preparations to take the road within the hour, and report to me at Friend Stair's," said my Lord, most affably. "We shall put your new-found loyalty to the test, Captain Ireton, by entrusting you with a most important mission. Go with the commissary-general and he will find you your mount and equipment."

Thus dismissed, I went with Stedman, and was accorded a more gentlemanly welcome than my overhearings had given me leave to expect.

On the way to the horse paddock the commissary-general told me of his plan to write a history of the campaign; a bit of confidence which set me laughing inwardly and wondering if he would put one John Ireton, sometime of the Scots Blues, and late captain in her Apostolic Majesty's Hussars, between the covers of his book. 'Tis small wonder that he did not. I have since had the pleasure of reading his history of the great war, and I find it curiously lacking in those incidents which did not redound to the honor and glory of the king's cause and army in the field.

Not to digress, however, my makeshift mount was soon exchanged for a better; I was allowed to draw what I would of accoutrements and provender from the king's stores; and so, to cut it short, I was presently at the door of my Lord's headquarters fully equipped and ready for the road.

I did hope in those last few moments that I might have a chance to exchange a word with my dear lady; might ask her forgiveness, or, failing so much grace of her, might at least have another sight of her sweet face.

But even this poor boon was denied me. I was scarce out of the saddle when an aide came to conduct me to the general, and I saw no one in the house save my Lord himself.

As you would guess, my instructions conformed exactly to the plan outlined by Lord Cornwallis in the council. I was entrusted with a sealed packet for delivery to Major Ferguson, and, for safety's sake, as my Lord explained, I was given the meat of the message to deliver verbally should the need arise. Ferguson was to be ordered to come in instantly by forced marches, if necessary, and he was on no account to risk a battle with the over-mountain men.

You may be sure, my dears, that I scarce drew breath till I was a-horse and out of the town and galloping hard on the road to that ford of Master Macgowan's which afterward became famous in our history under the misspelling "Cowan's Ford." 'Twas too good to be true that I should be thrust thus into the very gaping mouth of opportunity, and now and again I would feel the packet buttoned tight beneath my hussar jacket to make sure 'twas not a dream to vanish at a touch.

In the mad joy of it the spirit of prophecy came upon me, and I saw as if the thing were done, how at last I held the fate of the patriot cause in all our west country in the hollow of my hand.

XXXVII

OF WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK

Skipping lightly over the happenings of the two days following my departure from Charlotte on the king's errand, I may say that after passing the British outposts at the crossing of the Catawba, I met neither friend nor foe; and from noon on I rode to the westward through a pitiless drizzling rain, splashed to the belt with the mire of the road, and having little chance to inquire my way.

This last lack grew with the passing hours to the size of a threatening hazard. As you may have guessed, I knew no more than a blind man the route I should take; knew no more of the whereabouts of Gilbert Town and Major Ferguson's rendezvous than that both were some eighty miles to the westward.

At the outset I had thought to feel out the way in general by cautious inquiry along the road; but when I came to consider of this, the risk of betraying my ignorance to those who followed me was too great to let me turn aside to any of the wayside houses; and as for chance passers-by, there were none--the rain kept all within doors.

So I was constrained to gallop on without pause; and throughout that comfortless afternoon and the scarce less miserable day which followed, there were no incidents to break the dull monotony of the blind race save these two; that once the clouds lifted enough to give me a glimpse of my pursuers in a far reach to the eastward; and once again I had a sight of an awkward horseman in the road before me--saw him and tried to overtake him, and could not, for all his clumsy riding.

Now I was curious about this lone horseman ahead for more reasons than one, but chiefly because my glimpse of him seemed to show me the back of a man whom I made sure I had left safe behind in the British guard-house in Charlotte, to wit: the scoundrelly little pettifogger.

At first I scoffed at the idea. Saying he were free to leave Charlotte, how should he be riding post on my haphazard road to the westward? 'Twas against all reason, and yet the tittuping figure of which I had but a rain-veiled glimpse named itself Owen Pengarvin in spite of all the reasons I could bring to bear.

'Twas close on eventide of the second day, the early evening gloaming of a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would seem, from beneath the very hoofs of my horse.

"God save the king!"

The bay shied suddenly, standing with nostrils a-quiver; and I had to look closely to make out the little brown dot of humanity clad in russet homespun crouching in the path, its childish eyes wide with fear and its lips parted to shrill again: "God save the king!"

I threw a stiff leg over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might have taken as a pattern for one of his seraphs.

"What know you of the king, little one?" I asked.

"Gran'dad told me," she lisped. "If I was to see a soldier-man I must say, quick, 'God save the king,' or 'haps he'd eat me. Is--is you hungry, Mister Soldier-man?"

"Truly I am that, sweetheart; but I don't eat little maids. Where is your grandfather?"

"Ain't got any gran'favver; I said 'gran'_dad_.'"

"Well, your gran'dad, then; can you take me to him?"

"I don't know. 'Haps you'd eat _him_."

"No fear of that, my dear. Do I look as if I ate people?"

She gave me a long scrutiny out of the innocent eyes and then put up two little brown hands to be taken. "I tired" she said; and my sore heart went warm within me when I took her in my arms and cuddled her. After a long-drawn sigh of contentment, she said: "My name Polly; what's yours?"

"You may call me Jack, if you please--Captain Jack, if that comes the easier. And now will you let me take you to your gran'dad?"

She nodded, and I spoke to the bay and mounted, still holding her closely in my arms.

"Tell me quickly which way to go, Polly," I said; for besides being, as I would fear, far out of the way to Gilbert Town, the last hilltop to the rear had given me another sight of my shadowing pursuers riding hard as if they meant to overtake me.

The little maid sat up straight on the saddle horn and looked about her as if to get her bearings.

"That way," she said, pointing short to the right; and I wheeled the horse into a blind path that wound in and out among the trees for a long half mile, to end at a little clearing on the banks of a small stream.

In the midst of the clearing was a rude log cabin; and in the open doorway stood a man bent and aged, a patriarchal figure with white hair falling to his shoulders and a snowy beard such as Aaron might have worn. At sight of me the old watcher disappeared within the house, but a moment later he was out again, fingering the lock of an ancient Queen's-arm.

I drew rein quickly, and the little maid sat up and saw the musket.

"Don't shoot, gran'dad!" she cried. "He's Cappy Jack, and he doesn't eat folkses."

At this the old man came to meet us, though still with the clumsy musket held at the ready.

"These be parlous times, sir," he said, half in apology, I thought. And then: "You have made friends with my little maid, and I owe you somewhat for bringing her safe home."

"Nay," said I; "the debt is mine, inasmuch as I have the little one for my friend. 'Tis long since I have held a trusting child in my arms, I do assure you, sir."

He bowed as grandly as any courtier. "I hope her trust is not misplaced, sir; though for the matter of that, we have little enough now to take or leave."

"You have given it all to the king?" said I, feeling my way as I had need to.

His eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly.

"The king has taken all, sir, as you see," this with a wave of the hand to point me to the forlorn homestead. "There is naught left me save this poor hut and my little maid."

"'Taken,' you say? Then you are not of the king's side?"

He came a step nearer and faced me boldly. "Listen, sir: two of my sons were left on the bloody field of Camden, and the butcher Banastre Tarleton slew the other two at Fishing Creek. A month since a band of roving savages, armed with King George's muskets, mind you, sir, came down upon us at Northby, and this little maid's mother--"

He stopped and choked; and the child looked up into my face with her blue eyes full of nameless terror. "Oh, I want my mammy!" she said. "Won't you find her for me, Cappy Jack?"

I slipped from the saddle, still clasping the little one tightly in my arms.

"Enough, sir," I said, when I could trust myself to speak. "This same King George's minions have made me a homeless outcast, too. I live but to give some counter stroke, if I may."

"Ha!" said the old man, starting back; "then you are for our side? But your uniform--"

"Is that of an Austrian officer, my good sir, which I should right gladly exchange for the buff and blue, but that I can serve the cause better in this."

He dropped the Queen's-arm, took the child from me and bade me welcome to his cabin and all it held. But I was not minded to make him a sharer in my private peril.

"No," said I. "Tell me how I may find Gilbert Town and Major Ferguson's rendezvous, and I will ride whilst I can see the way."

He looked at me narrowly. "Ferguson left Gilbert Town some days since. If 'tis the place you seek, you are gone far out of your way; if 'tis the man--"

"'Tis the man," I cut in hastily.

The patriarch shook his head.

"If you be of our side, as you say, he will hang you out of hand."

"So I can make my errand good, I care little how soon he hangs me."

"And what may your errand be? Mayhap I can help you."

"It is to bring him to a stand till the mountain men can overtake him."

The old man trembled with excitement like a boy going into his first battle.

"Ah, if you could--if you could!" he cried. "But 'tis too late, now. Listen: his present camp is but three miles to the westward on Buffalo Creek. I was there no longer ago than the Wednesday. I--I made my submission to him--curse him--so that I might mayhap learn of his plans. He told me all; how that now he was safe; that the mountaineers were gone off from the fording of the Broad on a false scent; that Tarleton with four hundred of the legion would soon be marching to his relief.

"I stole away when I could, and that night took horse and rode twenty miles to Tom Sumter's camp at Flint Hill--all to little purpose, I fear. Poor Tom is still desperately sick of his Fishing Creek wounds, and Colonel Lacey was the only officer fit to go after Shelby and the mountain men to set them straight. I should have gone myself, but--"

"Stay, my good friend," said I; "you go too fast for me. If Ferguson is still out of communication with the main at Charlotte, we may halt him yet."

The old man made a gesture of impatience.

"'Tis a thing done because it is as good as done. The major will break camp and march to-morrow morning, and he can reach Charlotte at ease in two days. What with their losing of his trail, the mountain men are those same two days behind him."

"None the less, we shall halt him," said I. "Have you ever an inkhorn and a quill in your cabin?"

"Both; at your service, sir. But I can not understand--"

"We may call it the little maid's judgment on those who have made her fatherless. But for her stopping of me I should have come unprepared into the camp of the enemy. I am the bearer of a letter from Lord Cornwallis to this same Major Ferguson."

"You?--a bearer of Lord Cornwallis's despatches?" The old man put a blade's length between us and held the little one aloft as if he feared I might do her a mischief. I laughed and bade him be comforted.

"'Tis a long story, and I may not take the time to tell it now. But a word will suffice. Like yourself, I made my submission--and for the same purpose. My Lord accepted it and made me his despatch-bearer because he thought I knew the way to Ferguson when no one else knew it. But enough of this; time presses. Let me have ink and the quill."

The old man led the way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet; but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk engagement with the over-mountain men.

How to change such an order to reverse it in effect, I knew no more than a yokel; but here again my ancient ally showed himself a man of parts. Dressing the pen to make it the fellow of that used by my Lord Cornwallis, he scanned the handwriting of the letter closely, made a few practice pot-hooks to get the imitative hang of it, and wrote this _postscriptum_ at the bottom of the sheet.

_Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his despatches. Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the legion, will take the road for you to-night. If battle is forced upon you, make a stand and hold the enemy in check till reinforcements come.

Cornwallis._

The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve. 'Twas a most beautiful forgery. My Lord's crabbed handwriting was copied to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could have told which was his own; 'twas the same circle "C," the same printing "r," the same heavy precision throughout.

"Capital!" said I. "Now, if the lightning would but strike these pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand's turn."

"How?" said the patriarch; "are you followed?"

I told him I was; told him of my Lord's plot within a plot--that three light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.

At this the old warhorse--I learned afterward that he had fought through the French and Indian war--wagged his beard and his eye flashed.

"We must stop them," he said. "Three of them, do you say?"

"Three white men and an Indian trailer."

"Ha! If it were not for the little maid.... Let me think."

He fell to pacing up and down before the fire on the hearth, and I took the small one on my knee to let her chatter to me. 'Twas five full minutes before my ancient gave me the worth of his cogitations, but when he did speak it was much to the purpose.

"These marplot rear-guards of yours will spoil it all if they come to Ferguson's camp either before or after you. Do they know the major's present whereabouts?"

"No more than I did an hour ago. As I take it, they are depending on me to show them the way."

"Well, then; dead men tell no tales."

"But, my good friend, you forget there are four of them and only two of us! We should stand little chance with them in fair fight."

Again the old man's eyes snapped and glowed as if pent-fires were behind them.

"Was it fair fight when Tarleton's men rode in upon Tom Sumter's rest camp at Fishing Creek and cut down this little maid's father whilst he was naked and bathing in the stream? Was it fair fight when King George's Indian devils came down in the dead of night upon our defenseless house at Northby? Never talk to me of fairness, sir, whilst all this bloody tyranny is afoot!"

I thought upon it for a little space. 'Twas none so easy to decide. On one hand, stern loyalty to the cause I had espoused passed instant sentence on these four men whose lives stood in the way; on the other, common humanity cried out and called it murder.

Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race. I could not do it.

"No," said I, firmly. "These followers of mine must be stopped, as you say, else there is no need of my going on. But there must be no butcher's work."

The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.

"A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take another's," quoth he.

"Truly; and I am most willing on both heads. But we have had enough and more than enough of midnight massacre."

Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we were both waxing warm upon it. But in the midst the little maid came running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.

"Injun man!" was all she could say; but that was enough. At a bound I reached the door. An Indian was at my horse's head, loosing the halter, as I thought. Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara was at his back.

Luckily, he had the wit not to move. "No kill Uncanoola," he muttered, this without the stirring of a muscle. Then, as if he were talking to the horse: "White squaw, she send 'um word; say 'good by.'"

My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.

"Mistress Margery, you mean? Do you come from her?"

"She send 'um word; say 'good by,'" he repeated.

"What else did she say?" I demanded.

"No say anyt'ing else: say 'good by.'" He turned upon me at that and I saw why he had kept his face averted. He had on the war paint of a Cherokee chief.

"Uncanoola good Chelakee now," he grinned. "Help redcoat soldier find Captain Long-knife. Wah!"

I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of the thing staggered me. He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian tracker to lift my trail, 'twas he who had volunteered. But now my spirits rose. With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully and yet fairly with my rear-guard.

"Where are your masters now?" I asked.

He spat upon the ground. "Catawba chief has no master," he said, proudly. "Redcoat pale-faces yonder," pointing back the way I had come. "Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe."

"We must take them," said I.

He nodded. "Kill 'um all; take scalp. Wah!"

The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling. But I undertook to cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.

So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen's-arm for a weapon. So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out. When the night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their camp, sparing life as we could.

When all was settled, the old man gave us a supper of his humble fare, after which we went into the open again to sit out the hours of waiting. The rain had ceased, but the night was cloudy and the darkness a soft black veil to shroud the nearest objects. High overhead the autumn wind was sighing in the tree-tops, and now and again a sharper gust would bring down a pattering volley of lodged rain-drops on the fallen leaves.

Uncanoola sat apart in stoical silence, smoking his long-stemmed pipe. The old man and I talked in low tones, or rather he would tell me of his past whilst I sat and listened, holding the little maid in my arms.

After a time the child fell asleep, and I craved permission to put her in the little crib bed in the chimney corner. The flickering light of the fire fell upon her innocent face when I loosed the clasp of the tiny hands about my neck and laid her down. Again the wave of softness submerged me and I bent to leave a kiss upon the sweet unconscious lips.

Ah, my dears, you may smile again, if you will; but at that moment I had a far-off glimpse of the beatitude of fatherhood; I was no longer the hard old soldier I have drawn for you; I was but a man, hungering and thirsting for the love of a wife and trusting, clinging little children like this sweet maid.

I rose, turning my back upon the chimney corner and its holdings with a sigh. For now the time was come for action, and I must needs be a man of blood and iron again.

Lacking the Catawba to guide us, I doubt if either the old man or I could have found my rearguard's bivouac near the trail I had left. But Uncanoola led us straight through the pitchy darkness; and when we were come upon the three soldiers we found them all asleep around the handful of camp-fire.

'Twould have been murder outright to kill them thus; and now I think the old patriarch forgot his wrongs and was as merciful as I. But not so the Catawba. He had armed himself with a stout war-club, and before I was free to stop him he had knocked two of the three sleepers senseless, and would have battered out their brains but for the old man's intervention.

As for the officer, I had flung myself upon him in the rush and was having a pretty handful of him. But though he was broad in the shoulders, and as agile as a cat, he was taken at a sleeping man's disadvantage, and so I presently had the better of him.

"Enough, man! 'tis as good as a feast!" he cried, when I had him fast pinioned; and thereupon I let him have breath and freedom to sit up. In the act he had his first good sight of me, as I had mine of him. 'Twas Tybee and no other.

"Gad! my Captain," he said, feeling his throat. "If you have a grip like that for your friends, I'm damned glad I'm not your enemy."

"But you are," I rejoined, rather shamefacedly, yet thankful to the finger-tips that I had not consented to a massacre. "I am for the Congress and the Commonwealth, Lieutenant, and you are my prisoner. May I trouble you for the despatches you carry?"

He looked up at me with a queer grimace on his boyish face.

"The devil! but you're a cool hand, Captain Ireton! Whatever you were in that coil at Appleby, you've led the spy's long suit this time. And I'm not sure whether I like you any the worse for it, if so be you must be a rebel." And with that, he gave me the sealed packet and asked what I would do with him.

His query set me thinking. As for the two stunned troopers, I meant to turn them over to the old man for safe keeping; but I was loath to make it harder than need be for this good-natured youngster. So I put him upon his honor.

"Do you know what this packet contains?" I asked.

He laughed. "My Lord did not honor me with his confidence. I was to follow you in to Major Ferguson's camp, deliver the despatches, and vanish."

"Good; then you need tell no lies. When the Indian has fetched my horse, I shall ride to Ferguson's camp, and you may ride with me. I shall ask no more than this; that you do not fight again till you are exchanged; and that you will not tell Major Ferguson whose prisoner you are. Do you accept the terms?"

"Gad! I'd be a fool not to. But what's in the wind, Captain? Surely you can tell me, now that I am safely out of the running."

"You will know in a day or two; and in the meantime ignorance is your best safety. You can tell Major Ferguson that you were waylaid on the road by a party of the enemy, and that you were paroled and fell in with me."

He looked a little rueful, as a good soldier would, but was disposed to make the best of a bad bargain.

"Here's my hand on it," he said; and a little later we had dragged the two troopers to the cabin, where the old man became surety for their safe keeping, and were feeling our way cautiously westward at the heels of the Catawba who had taken his directions from our patriarch.

We pressed forward in silence through the shadowy labyrinth of the wood for a time, but at the crossing of a small runlet where we would stop to let the horses drink, Tybee burst out a-laughing.

"'Tis as good as a play," he said. "Three several times I've had to change my mind about you, Captain Ireton, and I'm not cock-sure I have your measure yet. But I'll say this: if you've strung my Lord successfully, you'll be the first to do it and come off alive in the end."

"The end is not yet, my good friend; and I may not come off better than the others," I rejoined. And with that we fared on again till we could see the camp-fires of Ferguson's little army twinkling between the tree trunks.

XXXVIII

IN WHICH WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER

As you may be sure, Major Patrick Ferguson was far too good a soldier to leave his camp unguarded on any side, and whilst we were yet a far cannon-shot from the glimmering fires a sentry's challenge halted us.

To the man's "Halt! Who goes there?" I gave the word "Friends," salving my conscience for the needful lie as I might.

"Advance, friends, and give the countersign."

I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken to Major Ferguson's headquarters. There was some little cautious demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field commander.

I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it. The little army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the camp-fires of these auxiliaries. But a different air was abroad in the camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.

Major Ferguson's tent was on a hillock some distance back from the stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our challenging on the sentry line.

Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table, transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism--the disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious Scotchman was the inventor.

Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.

"From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well," was all the answer the Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.

Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.

"I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing despatches"--so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken from Tybee.

Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was reaching for the packet--nay, when he had it in his hand--I started back with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous _skir-r-r_ of a rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.

In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my plot--and, belike, the plotter as well--was secured and quickly juggled into hiding.

"Damme! see now what you've done; you've spilt my breech-charger all about the place!" rasped the major, when all was over. And then: "Who the devil are ye, anyway; and what do ye want wi' me?"

I clicked my heels, saluted, and gave him the express from my Lord--the right one, this time. He tore off the wrapping, swore a hearty soldier oath when he read the fore part of the letter and clapped his leg joyfully, like the brave gentleman that he was, when he came to the _postscriptum_.

"Ye're a fine fellow, Captain; ye've brought me good news," he said; then he bade an aide call Captain de Peyster, his second in command, and in the same breath gave Tybee and me in charge to an ensign for our billeting for the night.

You will conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions against hallooing before you are out of the wood. Captain de Peyster was come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black, his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the sentries, burst into the tent.

"Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!" he shrieked, pointing at me.

As you would guess, all talk paused at this dramatic interruption, and all eyes were turned upon me. Had the little viper been content to rest his charge upon the simple accusation, I know not what might have happened. But when he got his breath he burst out in a tirade of the foulest abuse, cursing me up one side and down the other, and ending in a gibbering fit of rage that left him pallid and foaming at the lips--and gave me my cue.

"'Tis the little madman of Queensborough," I said, coolly, explaining to the bluff major. "His mania takes the form of a curious hatred for me, though I know not why. Two days since, he was put in arrest by my Lord's authority for threatening my life and that of his master's daughter. Now, it would seem, he has broken jail and followed me hither."

"A lunatic, eh? He looks it, every inch," said the major; and the blackguard lawyer, hearing my counter accusation, was doing his best to give it a savor of likelihood by fighting frantically with the two soldiers who had followed him into the tent.

"Out wi' him!" commanded the major. "We've no time to foolish away wi' a Bedlamite. Take him away and peg him out, and gi' him a dash o' water to cool his head."

Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing. So he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.

Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our blankets before one of the camp-fires. But just as I was dropping asleep he broke out with, "I would you might tell me what piece of rebel villainy this is that I've been a winking accomplice to."

I laughed. "'Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw. And surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he's thirsting for. Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome."

XXXIX

THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING

The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to find a strong position. From this it was evident that a battle was imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the patriots.

From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of the situation. A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of the over-mountain men of Clark's party and had sent them to the settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form--or rather with the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.

This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted. Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more Virginians.

Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland, Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers. Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army; and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a pursuit.

From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis's commands to the contrary. In his despatches he was continually urging the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted enemy. But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him turned whatever scale there was to turn. He had now with him some eleven hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.

For his battle-ground Major Ferguson chose the top of a forest-covered hill, the last and lowest elevation in the spur named that day King's Mountain.

In some respects the position was all that could be desired. There was room on the flat hilltop for an orderly disposition of the fighting force; and the slopes in front and rear were steep enough to give an attacking enemy a sharp climb. Moreover, there was a plentiful outcropping of stone on the summit, scantiest on the broad or outer end of the hill, and this was so disposed as to form a natural breastwork for the defenders.

But there were disadvantages also, the chief of these being the heavy wooding of the slopes to screen the advance of the assaulting party; and while the major was busy making his dispositions for the fight, I was on tenter-hooks for fear he would have the trees felled to belt the breastwork with a clear space.

He did not do it, being restrained, as I afterward learned, by his uncertainty as to whether or no the mountain men had cannon. Against artillery posted on the neighboring hillocks the trees were his best defense, and so he left them standing.

As you would suppose, my situation was now become most trying, and poor Tybee's was scarcely less so. Knowing my name and circumstance, and having, moreover, a high regard for my old field-marshal's genius, Major Ferguson was very willing to make use of my experience. These askings from one whom I knew for a brave and honorable gentleman let me fall between two stools. As a patriot spy, it was my duty to turn the major's confidence as a weapon against him. But as an officer and a gentleman I could by no means descend to such depths of perfidy.

In this dilemma I sought to steer a middle course, saying that I must beg exemption because my long hard ride had re-opened my old sword wound--as indeed it had. So the major generously let me be, thus heaping coals of fire upon my head; and I kept out of his way, consorting with Tybee, who, like myself, must be an onlooker in the coming fray.

As for the lieutenant, he was all agog to learn more than I dared tell him, and it irked him most nettlesomely to have a fight in prospect in the which he was in honor bound not to take a hand. Time and again he begged me to release him from his parole; and when I would not, he was for fighting me a duel with his freedom for a stake.

"Consider of it, Captain Ireton," he pleaded. "For God's sake, put yourself in my place. Here am I, in the camp of my friends, gagged and bound by my word to you whilst your infernal plot, whatever it may be, works out to the _coup de grâce_. Ye gods! it would have been far more merciful had you run me through in our wrestling match last night!"

"Mayhap," said I, curtly. "'Twas but the choice between two evils. Nevertheless, in time to come I hope you may conclude that this is the lesser of the two."

"No, I'm damned if I shall!" he retorted, fuming like a disappointed boy, and minding me most forcibly of my hot-headed Richard Jennifer. And then he would repeat: "I thought you were my friend."

"So I am, as man to man. But this matter concerns the welfare of a cause to which I have sworn fealty. Take your own words back, my lad, and put yourself in my place. Can I do less than hold you to your pledge?"

"No, I suppose not," he would say, grumpily. "Yet 'tis hard; most devilish hard!"

"'Tis the fortune of war. Another day the shoe may be upon the other foot."

The baggage wagons had been massed across the broad end of the hill to eke out the stone breastwork, and the last of these arguing colloquies took place beneath one of the wagons whither we had crept for shelter from the rain, which was now pouring again. In the midst of our talk, Major Ferguson dived to share our shelter, dripping like a water spaniel.

"Ha! ye're carpet soldiers, both of ye!" he snorted, and then he began to swear piteously at the rain.

"'Twill be worse for the enemy than for us," said Tybee. "We can at least keep our powder dry."

"Damn the enemy!" quoth the major, cheerfully. "So the weather does not put the creeks up and hold Tarleton and Major Gibbs back from us, 'tis a small matter whether the rebels' powder be dry or soaked."

"You have made all your dispositions, Major?" Tybee asked.

The major nodded. "All in apple-pie order, no thanks to either of ye. 'Tis a strong position, this, eh, Captain Ireton? I'm thinking not all the rebel banditti out of hell will drive us from it."

"'Tis good enough," I agreed; and here the talk was broken off by the major's diving out to berate some of his Tory militiamen who were preparing to make a night of it with a jug of their vile country liquor.

The rain continued all that Friday night and well on into the forenoon of the Saturday. During this interval we waited with scouts out for the upcoming of the mountain men. At noon Major Ferguson sent a final express to Lord Cornwallis, urging the hurrying on of the reinforcements, not knowing that his former despatch had been intercepted, nor that Tarleton had not as yet started to the rescue. A little later the scouts began to come in one by one with news of the approaching riflemen.

There was but a small body of them, not above a thousand men in all, so the spies said, and my heart misgave me. They were without cannon and they lacked bayonets; and moreover, when all was said, they were but militia, all untried save in border warfare with the Indians. Could they successfully assault the fortified camp whose defenders--thanks to the major's ingenuity--had fitted butcher-knives to the muzzles of their guns in lieu of bayonets? Nay, rather would they have the courage to try?

'Twas late in the afternoon before these questions were answered. The rain had ceased, and the chill October sunlight filtered aslant through the trees. With the clearing skies a cold wind had sprung up, and on the hilltop the men cowered behind the rock breastwork and waited in strained silence. At the last moment Major Ferguson sent Captain de Peyster to me with the request that I take command of the Tory force set apart to defend the wagon barricade--this if my weariness would permit. I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.

"Say no more, Captain," said this generous soldier, when I began some lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive."

And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was--and paid the penalty.

I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be seen, and I stood with him.

"Your friends are running," he said, when there was no reply to the opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.

"I think not," I objected, denying the apparent fact. "They have come too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley."

"But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it at the top," he insisted.

"That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so; here they come!"

At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run, these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting encouragements of the leaders--this until their circling line was completed.

Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.

The effect of this fine-bead target practice--for it was naught else--was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear, crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed commands of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging his men up to still closer quarters. "A little nearer, my brave boys; a little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"

You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them