lay the horse-thief on these reavers."

But my dear lad was rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he
retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come
through alive."

"Mayhap," I admitted. "But yet--"

He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an
extinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire
had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.

I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man
had walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.

"Give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shorten
upon," and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of
hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by
the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.

"Follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!" he commanded; and so,
pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a
shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer
shadows of the forest.

When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by
the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings
with the Ferara.

"Say, quick! what to do with him, Jack?" he demanded, when I came up;
and now my slower wit came into play.

"Out of this to some safer dressing-room, and I'll show you," said I;
and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or
more.

When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his
life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan I
had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in
train before this trooper should be missed.

So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we
stripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and
became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that
king whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,
waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the
boots we stuck fast, and I was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.

The change made,--and you may believe no play-house actor of them all
ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,--we bound our luckless captive
hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him
with only his boots for a memento,--happily for him the night was no
more than