and I
thought sure she had taken leave of her wits.

It happened as I warned her. The second cart-track, mounting from the
valley bottom, led us up to the high road on the ridge; and there,
peering out cautiously, I spied the backs of a rebel company posted
across it, a bare two hundred yards away towards Lostwithiel. Their
ranks parted and I had time enough, and no more, to push Margery into
the ditch and fling myself beside her among the brambles before a team
of horses swept by at a gallop, with a cannon bumping on its carriage
behind them and dragging a long cloud of dust.

"Quick!" called Margery as it passed: sprang to her feet and across
the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I
followed, almost on all-fours.

"But what folly is this?" I demanded, overtaking her by the opposite
hedge.

"I know what I am doing," she said. "They did not see---the dust hid
us. Now quick again, and help me up to this hazel-bush."

I swung her up, and myself after her. The bush was one which I myself
had polled two years before; an old stump set thickly about with young
shoots, in the cover of which we huddled, staring down the slope of
our own great grass-field (the largest on Lawhibbet farm) now filled
with rebels withdrawing in good order upon the earthwork on Castle
Dore. This earthwork stood in the very next field on our right, behind
what had used to be a hedge but where was now a gap some twenty yards
wide (levelled a few days before by Essex's cannoniers), and through
this gap, towards which the regiments were streaming, drifted the
smoke of the guns as they flung their round shot high over our heads,
and over the hedge on our left which hid from us all of the royal
troops save now and then the flash of a steel cap behind the
top-growth of hazel ash and bramble.

The line of this hedge, on the near side to us, was yet held by
musketeers who had spread themselves along it very closely and seemed
to be using every bush. Indeed I wondered how they were to be forced
from such cover, when a party of them by the gate suddenly gave back
and began running, and through the gateway a small troop of horse came
pouring at their heels. And albeit these cavaliers must have suffered
desperately in so charging up to a covered foe (and many riderless
chargers came galloping with them), yet the remnant held such good
order that in pouring through they seemed to divide by agreement, a
part wheeling to right and a