that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and
had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more;
when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and
grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's
laying in.

"A toast!" cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet
with the glass held high. "To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may
she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another,
Jack Ireton!"

We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like
two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one
of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught
whilst that first one lived.

You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short
hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress
Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart
the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting
of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last
loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for
what must come--and so it did, though not as I prefigured.

We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began
to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned
down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby
Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and
two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be
Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the
spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a
mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.

His last word to me was one of generous caution.

"Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There
will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and
you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to
betray you."

"Trust me," said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward,
and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set
abuzz in the small hours of the night.

XLII

IN WHICH MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS

Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in
decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with
nothing like the