ght come off with
nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.

'Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me.
Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing,
the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion
was nipped in the bud. I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made
to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation
whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.

When that leaven began to work in me I was fit for the daringest thing
that offered; so I paused to ask if my Lord Cornwallis were yet in the
house.

"He is writing letters in his bed-room," was her answer.

"If you will show me the way thither I shall be your poor debtor by that
much more."

"I will not--unless you first tell me what you mean to do." She said it
firmly, but now I was fronting death and could be as firm as she.

"If you will not show me the way, I shall find it for myself." So much I
said; but as for telling her that I meant to save his Lordship and all
the others the trouble of running me down, I could not do that.

"You are going to give yourself up," she said; and when I would not deny
it, she darted before me and set her back against the wainscot door.
"'Tis folly, folly!" she cried. "He would but pull the bell-cord and--"

"And give the order that Colonel Tarleton's sentence be executed upon
me, you would say. Be it so. But in that event I can at least clear you
and your father of any complicity in my hiding."

"I say you shall not go!"

What touch of savagery is it in a man that will not suffer him to let a
woman, loved or unloved, stand in the last resort against his will? At
any other time I would have pleaded with her; would have ended, mayhap,
by weakly deferring to her wish. But now--well, you must remember, my
dears, that I was the trapped rat. I took her gently in my arms, set her
aside, and stepped out into the corridor.

I looked for nothing less than a volcano-burst of righteous indignation
to pay me out for this piece of tyranny. But now, as twice or thrice
before, my lady showed me how little a man may know of a woman's moods.

"You need not be so masterful rough with me," she said, with a pouting
of the sweet lips that set me back upon that thought of a wayward child
wanting to be kissed. "If you say I must, I am in duty bound to show you
the way." And so she led on and I followed, in a deeper maze than any
she had