shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
he knew no more till some one--his master, as he thought--kicked him
alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.

Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,
it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his
orders was his master. In the darkness and confusion he could make sure
of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and
the wording of the message he carried.

When we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him
once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried
council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one.
Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim
Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without
a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for
going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should
promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy
exhaustion, starvation and failure.

We grew hot upon it, Richard and I; he with a young lover's unrecking
rashness, and I with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn;
and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba drew aside and let us have it out.
Dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not
above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age
in my face and swearing hotly that I knew not so much as the alphabet of
love.

The taunts were passed in silence, since I would set them over against
the irrevocable wrong I had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he
could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of
jealous wrath.

But when he would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all
unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a
long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The
hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer
heat we would be forced to kill daily. On the other hand, with horses, a
bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should b