with danger; they would be busy with joy. That must wait.

"We have come here, my father and I," she began, "to say one word to
you, Captain Archdale. We talked it over, and we saw no other way."

"You are pale," cried Stephen suddenly. "You must be very tired. Let us
sit down here while you tell me." And he pointed to a coil of rope at
hand. But she shook her head.

"I am not tired, thank you; I am disappointed that I can't go back
immediately, that I must wait until to-morrow, when the dispatches will
be ready."

"You need not," he cried. "The General shall let you go if you wish it.
I will insist upon it. The dispatches can go some other way. If the
Governor wants news in such haste, he would do better to send us some
powder to make them out of. He was enough in a hurry to get us off, to
give us something to do after we are here."

"I should think you had something to do," she said pointing to the
battlements of Louisburg which at that distance and from that angle
looked as if no shot had ever been fired against them. "But don't on any
account speak to the General. We are glad to do even so little for the
cause. And perhaps it's not that that makes me pale. I don't know. I
have a warning hard to deliver to you. I have come hundreds of miles to
do it. I will give it to you immediately, for you may need it at any
moment." She drew closer to him, and laid one hand upon his arm as if to
prevent his losing by any chance the words she had to say. Her gesture
had an impressiveness that made him realize as much as her face did how
terribly in earnest she was.

"It must be something about Katie," he thought. And the vision of Lord
Bulchester rose before him clearly.

"Listen," said Elizabeth absorbed in her attempt to make him feel what
she feared would seem incredible to him. "Stray shots have picked off
many superfluous kings in the world--and men and the world not been the
wiser. This is what some one said when the war was being talked of, said
at your house, and said in speaking of you."

"Said it to you?" interposed Archdale with a quick breath.

"Oh, no, but about you, I am sure, _sure_, though it has taken me
all this time to find it out. And,--oh, wait a moment,--the man who said
it was your guest then, and he is here now, else we should not have
come; he is here, perhaps he is close by you every day, and he,--he is
meaning the shot for you." She waited a moment drawing a breath of
relief that she had begu