the Lord, if you break
it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
ridge-pole."

Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.

Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.

While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
was not yet in from posting out the sentries.

I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
hear in brief.

"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."

I made so sure that I should hang in any case that it seemed foolish to
answer, and so I saved my breath. Withal he was the terror of our
Southland, this tyrant colonel gave me time to consider; and while he
waited, grim and silent, the candles on the table guttered and ran down,
and the dim light failed till I could no longer see the face of her I
loved framed in the archway of the stair.

I thought it hard that I had seen my last of her sweet face thus through
thickening shadows, as a dream might fade. Nevertheless, I would be glad
that I had seen her thus, since otherwise, I thought, I must have gone
without this last or any other sight of her.

It was while I was still straining my eyes for one more glimpse of her,
and while the court room silence deepened dense upon us like the
shadows, that Colonel Ta