H OF TEA 460

XLIV WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END 470

XLV WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT 480

XLVI OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES 488

XLVII ARMS AND THE MAN 505

XLVIII WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY 517

XLIX A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE 531

L RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID 549

LI THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT 562

LII BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END 573

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD

The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.

'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.

Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
rejoicing.

The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.

Now I had known this