id he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by
side.

"Yes, all," said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the
lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my
father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.

"Then you do not love Madge more?" he queried, his eye kindling.

"Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have
the house and all its holdings."

We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert
Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed
blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and
when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad
turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.

"You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!" he said. "She
is not here."

XLIX

IN WHICH A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE

What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new
tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were
spared the knowing. For when he said, "She is not here," two happenings
intervened to give us both other things to think of.

The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a
troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the
swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and
bowing behind it.

Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing
more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the
avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted
things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an
ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing
without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.

It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.

"The horses!--we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring
his bell and tell the redcoats we are here," he would say; and before I
knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling
softly to the big gray.

Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came
obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when
the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair
of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.

"So far, so good," quoth Dick. Then to the old black, w