But these have little or naught to do with my tale,
and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the
dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and
outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who
was enamored of death.

As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither
better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the
skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or
that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at
me day and night.

Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I
was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days
lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for
the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the
more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at
each remembrance of the hand that gave them.

One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we
were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the
half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the
caretaker of the deserted town house.

As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and
the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation
I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra
massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de
house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night;
yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into
another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen
woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made
her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late
surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking
to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her
to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.

I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do
think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these
tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving
because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.
For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which
would let me from the path of these two