hat?" he asked briskly, and I was telling him that the
dispositions of the Royal troops were no secret to the rebels
(warning of all fresh movements being brought daily to the ford from
Lostwithiel), when a sergeant interrupted and, forbidding any further
converse, packed me off homeward, yet not unkindly.

For what came of this talk Margery--to whom I reported it that same
evening--must bear the credit. For two days she brooded over it,
keeping silence even beyond her wont, and then on the night of the
30th, at nine o'clock, when I was scarce abed, she tapped at my door
and bade me arise and dress myself. She had an expedition to propose,
no less than that we should cross the river and pay Mark a visit in
his quarters.

Her boldness took away my breath: yet as she whispered her plan it did
not seem impossible or, bating the chance of being shot by a stray
outpost, so very dangerous. A heavy fog lay over the hills, as it
had lain for nights. The tide was flowing. My father's boat had been
dragged ashore and lay bottom upwards under a cliff about three
hundred yards above the ford. If we could reach and right it without
being discovered, either one of us was clever enough, with an oar over
the stern, to scull noiselessly across to the entrance of a creek
where the current would take us up towards Boconnoc between banks held
on either side by Royalists; to whom, if they surprised us, we could
tell our business.

The plan (I say) was a promising one. It miscarried only after we had
righted the boat and were dragging it across the strip of shingle
between the meadow bank and the water's edge. A quick-eared sentry
caught the sound and challenged at two gunshots' distance. I had the
boat's nose afloat as I heard his feet stumbling over the uneven
foreshore: but the paddles and even the bottom-boards were lying on
the beach behind us. There was no help for it. Margery stepped on
board swiftly and silently, and I pushed well out into the stream,
following until the water rose to my middle and so standing while
the fellow challenged again. For a minute we kept mute as mice. The
footsteps hesitated and came to a halt by the water's edge a full
twenty yards below, and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the
distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved
myself over the stern and into the boat, which swung broadside to
the current and so was borne up and beyond danger from him. But the
mischief was