The fugitive was all but spent.  He ran, bowed almost to the ground, with a wild back glance ever and again over his shoulder.  His pursuer gained on him with great strides, and in his hand he carried a bare knife.  I dared not shoot, for Grey was between me and his enemy.

’Twas as well I could not, for otherwise Grey would never have reached us alive.  We cried to him to swerve, and the sound of our voices brought up that last flicker of hope which waits till the end in every man.  He seemed actually to gain a yard, and now he was near enough for us to see his white face and staring eyes.  Then he stumbled, and the man with the knife was almost on him.  But he found his feet again, and swerved like a hunted hare in one desperate bound.  This gave me my chance:  my musket cracked, and the Indian pitched quietly to the ground.  The knife flew out of his hand and almost touched Grey’s heel.

With the sound Shalah had leaped from the gate, picked up Grey like a child, and in a second had him inside the palisade and the bars down.  He was none too soon, for as his pursuer fell a flight of arrows broke from the thicket, and had I shot earlier Grey had died of them.  As it was they were too late.  The bowmen rushed into the glade, and five muskets from our side took toll of them.  My last vision was of leaping yellow devils capering from among blazing trees.

Then without warning it was dark again, and from the skies fell a deluge of rain.  In a minute the burning creepers were quenched, and the whole world was one pit of ink, with the roar as of a thousand torrents about our ears.  As the vividness of the lightning, so was the weight of the rain.  Ringan cried to us to stand to our places, for now was the likely occasion for attack; but no human being could have fought in such weather.  Indeed, we could not hear him, and he had to stagger round and shout his command into each several ear.  The might of the deluge almost pressed me to the earth, I carried Elspeth into her bower, but the roof of branches was speedily beaten down, and it was no better than a peat bog.

That overwhelming storm lasted for maybe a quarter of an hour, and then it stopped as suddenly as it came.  Inside the palisade the ground swam like a loch, and from the hill-side came the rumour of a thousand swollen streams.  That, with the heavy drip of laden branches, made sound enough, but after the thunder and the downpour it seemed silence itself.  Presently when I looked up I saw that the black wrack was clearing from the sky, and through a gap there shone a watery star.

Ringan took stock of our defences, and doled out to each a portion of sodden meat.  Grey had found his breath by this time, and had got a spare musket, for his own had been left in the woods.  Elspeth had had her wits sorely jangled by the storm, and in the revulsion was on the brink of tears.  She was very tender towards Grey’s condition, and the sight gave me no jealousy, for in that tense hour all things were forgotten but life and death.  Donaldson, at Ringan’s bidding, saw to the feeding of the horses as if he were in his own stable on the Rappahannock.  It takes all sorts of men to make a world, but I thought at the time that for this business the steel nerves of the Borderer were worth many quicker brains and more alert spirits.