among the trees; you
cannot miss. The quarry is full of brambles--good hiding, in case we
have trouble. No cavalryman will win so far, you may be sure."

Margery gathered her skirts about her, and we stole out into the
darkness. At the door she turned up her face to Mark. "Kiss me, my
brother." He kissed her, and breaking away (as I thought) with a low
groan, strode from us up the lane.

"Now why should he go up the lane?" mused Margery: and I too wondered.
For the first alarm must needs come from the lower end towards which
he had been walking with his other visitor, when we first spied on the
cottage through the bushes.

But 'twas not for us to guess how the troops were disposed or where
the outposts lay. We made our escape through the little garden, and,
blundering along the woodland path behind it, came at length to a
thicket of brambles over which hung the scarp of the quarry with a
fringe of trees above it pitch-black against the foggy moonlight. Here
on the soaked ground I found a clear space and a tumbled stone or two,
on which we crouched together, sleepless and intently listening.

For an hour we heard no sound. Then the valley towards Lostwithiel
shook with a dull explosion, which puzzled us a great deal. (But the
meaning, I have since learnt was this:--Two prisoners in the church
there had contrived to climb up into the steeple and, pulling the
ladder after them, jeered down upon the rebels' Provost Marshal, who
was now preparing for a night retreat of the Infantry upon Fowey and
in a hurry to be gone. "I'll fetch you down," said he, and with a
barrel of powder blew most of the slates off the roof but without
harming the defiant pair who were found still perched on the steeple
next morning.)

After this the hours passed without sound. It seemed incredible, this
silence in the ring of wakeful outposts. Margery shivered now and
again, and I knew that her eyes were open, though she said nothing.
For me, towards morning, I dropped into a doze, and woke to the
tightening of her hand upon my arm.

"Hist!"

I listened with her. The sky had grown grey about us, and up through
the dripping trees came a soft and regular footfall, as of a body
of horse moving past. "It will be Mark's troop," I whispered, and
listened again. It seemed to me that the noise moved away to our right
instead of towards Lostwithiel. A quick suspicion took me then: I
scaled the right-hand side of the quarry at a run, burst through th