r enough
to tell me of it.

So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was
space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of
success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm
that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough
that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion
was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the
bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in
sleep--I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering
fires--I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then
was any messenger of Margery's to pass the lines, or, passing them, to
come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a
prisoner in all but name?

Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while
the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart
in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the
bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I
had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger
were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the
fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was
sent,--I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my
correspondent,--both Margery and Dick would be involved.

'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we
seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the
thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in
silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan
moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor
crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding
abreast--a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse
sandwiched in between, a woman.

You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she
had done--this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any
cost. Having no messenger she could trust--she knew it well when she had
promised me--she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard
that would have daunted many a man.

I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times
that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.
Her captors passed the word while yet I looked an