for some few days after jennifer's narrow escape at the entrance to our hiding place, the cherokees were hot upon our scent, quartering the forest on both banks of the river, determined, as it seemed, to hunt or starve us out.
it was in this time of siege that i came to know, as i had not known before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad's love for me. while the life-tide was at its ebb and i was querulous and helpless weak, he was my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. and later, when the tide was fairly turned and i had found my soldier's appetite again, he spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess what risks he ran to fetch me dainties from the outer world.
in this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from serving me. once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and maize cake with plain cold water, i mourned the good wine idling in its bin at jennifer house. at that, without a word to me, he took the whole night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its bringing had cost in toil and hazard.
another time i spoke of english beef, saying how it would rebuild a man at need—how it had made the english soldier what he is. whereupon, as before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone the night long, and slaughtered me some tory yearling,—'twas mr. gilbert stair's, i mistrusted, though dick would never name the owner, and so i had a sirloin to my breakfast.
in these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. if he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could not have made him tenderer.
'twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. if i have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the border-born.
but on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart, a keener eye or a lighter hand. and in a service for friend or mistress he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about who made a business of their chivalry.
with his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure that i was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. as you have guessed, i had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how i had staked his chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate—staked and lost it. now that it was gone, i saw how i had missed the golden opportunity; how i had weakly hesitated when delay could only make the telling harder.
by tacit consent we never spoke of margery. richard's silence hung upon despair, i thought; and as for mine, since the husband's road and the lover's lay so far apart, i could not bring myself to speak of her. but she was always first in my thoughts in that time of convalescence, as i made sure she was in his; and at the last the hidden thing between us was brought to light.
it was on a night some three weeks or more after my fever turn. our larder had run low again, and jennifer had spent the earlier hours of the night abroad—to little purpose, as it chanced. 'twas midnight or thereabouts when he came swearing in to tell me that the tories were out again to harry our side of the river afresh, and to make a refugee's begging of a bag of meal a thing of peril.
"they'll starve us out in shortest measure at this rate," he prophesied. "they have trampled down all the standing corn for miles around, and this morning they burned the mill. 'tis our notice to quit, and we'd best take it. there has been fighting to the south of us—a plenty of it—at rocky mount and hanging rock, and elsewhere, and every man is needed. if you are strong enough to stand the march, we'll run the gantlet down the river in the pirogue and cut across from the lower ford to join major davie or mr. gates."
i said i was fit enough, and would do whatever he thought best. and then i took a step upon the forbidden ground.
"falconnet is still at appleby hundred?" i said.
he nodded.
"and you will join the army at the front and leave margery to his tender mercies?"
his laugh was bitter; so bitter that i scarce knew it for richard jennifer's.
"mistress margery stair is well, and well content, as i told you once before. she has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well hanged."
"nay, richard; you judge her over-harshly. i fear you do not love her as her lover should."
"say you so? listen: to-night i got as far as the manor house, being fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. god help me, jack! i had it. they have scraped together all the tory riff-raff this side of the river—falconnet and the others—and are holding high revel at appleby. since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant enough of women of their own kidney, and i saw madge dancing like any light o' love with every jackanapes that offered."
"in her father's house she could not well do less," i averred, cut to the heart, as he was, and yet without his younger lover's jealousy to make me unjust.
"or more," he added, savagely. "'tis as i say; she lacks nothing we can give her, and we'd as well be off about our business."
i think he never had it in his heart to leave her in any threat of danger. but from his point of view there was no danger threatening her save that which she seemed willing enough to rush upon—a life of titled misery as lady falconnet. i saw how he would see it; saw, too, that his was the saner summing of it up. and yet—
he broke into my musings with a pointed question. "what say you, jack? 'tis but a little whiffet of a tory jade who cares not the snap of her finger for either of us. the night is fine and dark. shall we float the canoe and give them all the slip?"
this was how it came to turn upon a "yes" or "no" of mine. i hesitated, i know not why. in the little pause the fire burned low between us, and the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. the silence, too, was stifling. there was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle in the throat of the dying.
i've always made a scoff of superstition, and yet, my dears, a thousand questions in this life of ours must hang answerless to the crack of doom if you deny it standing-room. i knew no more than i have set down here of margery's besetment; nay, i had every reason richard jennifer had to believe that she was well and well content, lacking nothing, save, mayhap, the freedom to marry where she chose.
and yet, out of the stifling silence there came a sudden cry for help; a cry voiceless to the outward ear, but sharp and piercing to that finer inward sense; a cry so real that i would start and listen, marveling that jennifer made no sign of having heard it.
in the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and scattering the handful of fire where it struck.
jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between his teeth upon our dallying.
"too late, by god!" he cried. "they've trapped us like a pair of blind moles!" and with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear again when he found no room to swing it in.
having the handier weapon, i slipped out before him, creeping on hands and knees till i could see the leafy screen at the den's mouth, and the shimmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it. there was no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as jennifer had left it.
to make assurance sure, i would have scrambled to the bank above; but at the moment jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so i crept back into the burrow.
"see here," he said, excitedly. "what a devil will you make of this?"
he had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again, and had sought and found the arrow. it was a blunt-head reed and no war shaft. and around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken threads, was a little scroll of parchment.
"'tis the catawba's arrow," said jennifer, though how he knew i could not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.
unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of captain stuart's that i had found and lost again. and on the margin of it was my note to jennifer, written in that trying moment when the bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling beside me, murmuring her "holy marys."
"read it," said i. "it explains itself. tarleton had laid me by the heels to wait for the hangman, and i would have passed the word about the indian-arming on to you. but my messenger was overhauled, and—"
"yes, yes," he broke in; "i've spelled it out. but this line added at the bottom—surely, that is never your crabbed fist. by heaven! 'tis in madge's hand!"
he knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we deciphered it together. it was but a line, as he had said, with neither greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.
"if this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"—here was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and then, in french, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come to me out of the darkness and silence: "a moi! pour l'amour de dieu!"
we fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.
"you make it out?" said i, after a moment of strained silence.
he nodded. "she has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were boy and maid together."
a full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the spring.
it was jennifer who spoke first. "'twas meant for me," he said; and his voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.
"no!" said i, curtly.
"i say it was!"
"then you say the thing which is not."
had i been richard jennifer, i know not what bitter reproach i should have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. but he said no word of what had gone before.
"you may give me the lie, if you like, john ireton; i shall not strike you." he said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. then he added, hotly: "you know well that word was meant for me!"
at this—god forgive me!—my jealous wrath broke bounds and i cursed him for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye of every woman he should meet. "she needs a man!" i raged, lost now to every sense of decent justice, "a man, i say! and to whom would she send if not to her—"
i choked upon the word. he had risen with me, and we stood face to face in that grim earth-womb, snarling fiercely at each other across the narrow firelit space; two men with every tie to knit us close together, and yet—god save us all!—a pair of wild beasts strung up to the killing pitch because, forsooth, we must needs front each other across a deadline drawn by the finger of a woman!
god knows what would have come of all this had my dear lad been as fierce a fool as i. 'twas his good common sense that saved us both, i think, for when the savage rival madness was at its height he turned away, swearing we were the very pick and choice of a world of asses to stand thus feeling for each other's throats when, mayhap, the lady needed both of us.
this brought me to my senses at a gallop, as you would guess; to them and to the lighting of the conscience fire within whereon to grill the wicked heart that but now had thirsted for a brother's blood.
"now god have mercy on us both!" i groaned. "forgive me, dick, if you can; i was as mad as any bedlamite. if i have any claim on her, 'tis not of her good will, you may be sure. you have the baronet to fear—not me."
he shook his head and pointed to the parchment—to the line in french.
"francis falconnet was under the same roof with her—or at least in easy call—when she wrote that, jack. he is no longer my rival—nor yours."
his word set me thinking, and i would fall to picking out the strands that jealous wrath had woven for me into the web of happenings. setting aside the story brought by ephraim yeates, there was no certain proof that she had ever favored the englishman; nay, more, till i had come to be madly jealous of falconnet, i had made sure that jennifer was the favored one.
at this, as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the lightning's flash, i saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had brought—saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword i had let fall when dick had found the arrow.
"what is it, jack?" he asked, gently.
"my sword!" i gasped. "we should have been half-way there by this. yeates was misled. 'tis falconnet she fears. she was at bay—hark you, at bay and fair desperate. that word of hers to the baronet was her poor pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here—"
he found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:
"come on! you can strew the dust and ashes on me later. you said you loved her the better, and i do believe it now, jack! you trusted her, as i did not. we'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever it may be; and after that is done i'll make my bow and leave you a fair field."
"nay, nay; that you shall not, dick," i began; but he was half-way through the narrow passage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword and the bearskin from his bed; and i was fain to follow quickly, leaving the protest all unfinished.
