Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did
with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?
'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for my
game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,
be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme
desespere, ma cherie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry
you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might
have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go
where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady
Falconnet!"

The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,
was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four
would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;
nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of
us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would
be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.

So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass and
brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised
his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because
the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare
the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come
within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping
coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we
would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped
us with a hand for each.

"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats,
and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.
Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a
good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that
ain't teched yet."

It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear
doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and
not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless
little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.

"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she
said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having
the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is
all. You can not take