.

"My sword!" I gasped. "We should have been half-way there by this.
Yeates was misled. 'Tis Falconnet she fears. She was at bay--hark you,
at bay and fair desperate. That word of hers to the baronet was her poor
pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here--"

He found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:

"Come on! You can strew the dust and ashes on me later. You said you
loved her the better, and I do believe it now, Jack! You trusted her, as
I did not. We'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever
it may be; and after that is done I'll make my bow and leave you a fair
field."

"Nay, nay; that you shall not, Dick," I began; but he was half-way
through the narrow passage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword
and the bearskin from his bed; and I was fain to follow quickly, leaving
the protest all unfinished.

XVIII

IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH

As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak
when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and
beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.

Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm
midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As
I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the
rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and
sweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, were
separate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse.
Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to match
the windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores sped
backward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood that
barely kissed the ripples in passing, the river lapped and gurgled,
chuckling weirdly at the paddle plungings, and swirling aft in the
longer reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a wavering
finger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.

With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was some
little distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst with
death, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion through
the wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to come
upon a sentry.

Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guarded
than that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, spared
by my father twenty ye