Jennifer. 'Tis
for you to make the dispositions."

"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."

"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as
travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and
this is what we did.

The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted
over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was
a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing
soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard
and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner,
with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment
as the hostelry afforded.

"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he
might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.

I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal
telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel
to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp
confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if
I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to
serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn
nothing here."

"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was
something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to
whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"

I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's
weaknesses.

"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the
dead come back to life?"

"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the
dominies."

"Then I have seen a ghost--a most horrible mask of a man we both know to
our cost."

"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."

"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man
himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the
word.

"No!" said I.

"I tell you yes."

I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into
the chair.

"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take
precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I
have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live--as he
is."

"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged,