the secrecy and vigilance there were good
reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
Charlotte.

I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.

A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.

Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though
nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
Richard Coverdale.

"So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning
over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
page here for you.

"Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain;
and then I took two strides to front him fairly.

"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and,
lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
like an ox in the shambles.

III

IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST

True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.

After the greetings, which, as you may like to