And a
sorry day that for you Tories and refugees, my dear gentleman!"

"But if that day ever comes, _you'll_ have been rotting underground a
long time,--and thanks to _me_, don't forget that!"

"Thanks to _her_, you coward!" cried Peyton. "'Twas she that sent her
servants after me! You didn't dare try taking me, alone!"

"Bah!" said Colden, hotly, "I might have pistolled you here
to-night"--and he placed his hand on the fire-arm in his belt--"but
for the presence of the ladies!"

"Was it the ladies' presence," retorted Peyton, contemptuously, "or
the fact that you're a devilish bad shot?"

Neither man heard the door moved farther open, or saw Elizabeth step
through the aperture to the inner side of the threshold, where she
stopped and watched. Peyton's back was towards her, and Colden's rage
at the last words was too intense to permit his eyes to rove from its
object.

"Damn you!" cried the major. "I'd show you how bad a shot I am, but
that I'd rather wait and see you on the gallows!"

"Will _she_ come to see me there, I wonder?" said Peyton, half
thoughtfully. "She ought to, for it's her work sends me there, not
yours! 'Twill not be _your_ revenge when they string me up, my jolly
friend!"

Taunted beyond all self-control, the Tory yelled:

"Not mine, eh? Then I'll have mine now, you dog!"

With that, he strode forward and struck Harry a fierce blow across the
face with the flat side of Harry's own broken sword.

Harry merely blinked his eyes, and did not flinch. He turned pale,
then red, and in a moment, first clearing his voice of a slight
huskiness, said, quietly:

"That blow I charge against you both,--the lady as well as you!"

Colden had stepped back some distance after delivering the blow.
Something in Harry's answer seemed to infuriate still further the
devil awakened in the Tory's body, for he cried out:

"The lady as well as me,--yes! And this, too!"

And he advanced on Peyton, to strike a second time.

"Stop! How dare you?"

The cry was Elizabeth's. It startled Colden so that he loosened his
hold of the broken sword before he could deliver the blow. At that
instant, she caught his arm in her one hand, the sword-guard in her
other. She tore the weapon from his grasp, and faced him with a
countenance as furious as his own.

"What do you mean?" he cried.

For answer she struck him in the face with the flat of the sword, as
he had struck Peyton. "You sneak!" she said.

He recoiled, and