the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an
escaped Bedlamite as he fled. It asked for no second glance, this
apparition of the yelling madman; 'twas our captive soldier, foot-loose
and racing in to raise the hue and cry.

Now you may always count upon this failing in a cautious man, that at a
crisis he is like to do the unwisest thing that offers. This cutting out
of Margery's mare was none so vital a matter that I should have risked
the marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan upon it. Yet having done this very
thing, I must needs make a bad matter infinitely worse.

Instead of mounting to ride a charge through the camp, and so to draw
the pursuit after me toward the cavern entrance, as I should, I slapped
the mare to send her bounding through the guard line, snatched a saddle
from its oak-branch peg to hurl it in the faces of the sentry group, and
darting aside, plunged into the laurel thicket to come by running where
I could and creeping where I must to that place where I had left Richard
Jennifer.

All hot and exasperated as I was, 'twas something less than cooling to
find Dick a-double on the ground, holding his sides and laughing like a
yokel at his first pantomime.

"Oh, ho, ho! did you--did you twig him, Jack?" he gasped. "Saw you ever
such a mincing puss-in-boots since the Lord made you? Ah! ha! ha!"

"The devil take your ill-timed humor!" I cried. "Up with you, man, and
let us vanish while we may!"

By this the camp was in a pretty ferment, as you would guess--our late
captive having had space enough to tell his tale. Drunk or sober,
Falconnet was afoot and alert, shouting his orders to the Englishmen who
were scrambling for their arms, and to the Indians who came swarming up
from the lodges.

Whilst we looked, the Cherokees scattered like a company of trained
gillies to beat us out of cover; and when the hunt was fairly up, the
baronet-captain set his men in marching order to surround the wigwam of
the captives.

As yet there was time for a swift retreat up the valley, or at least for
the choosing of some battle-field of our own where the enemy need not
outnumber us twenty to one; and again I urged Richard to bestir himself.
But it was the sight of Falconnet's troopers deploying to surround the
tepee-lodge, and not any word of mine, that broke his merriment in the
midst.

At a bound he was up and handing me my sword.

"Good by, Jack; go you whilst you can. You'll be like to meet Eph and
the Catawba