rom that same husband's mortal enemy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
left a heap of writhing, dying men