It fell Royals.  We had both been standing, and Grey now bowed to me and sat down.  His face was very pale and his lips tightly shut.

The Governor gave a last toast “Let us drink,” he called, “to Dulcinea’s champion and the fortunes of his journey.”  At that there was such applause you might have thought me the best-liked man in the dominion.  I looked at Elspeth, but she averted her eyes.

As we left the table I stepped beside Grey.  “You must come with me,” I whispered.  “Nay, do not refuse.  When you know all you will come gladly.”  And I appointed a meeting on the next day at the Half-way Tavern.

I got to my house at the darkening, and found Ringan waiting for me.

This time he had not sought a disguise, but he kept his fiery head covered with a broad hat, and the collar of his seaman’s coat enveloped his lower face.  To a passer-by in the dusk he must have seemed an ordinary ship’s captain stretching his legs on land.

He asked for food and drink, and I observed that his manner was very grave.

“Are things in train, Andrew?” he asked.

I told him “to the last stirrup buckle.”

“It’s as well,” said he, “for the trouble has begun.”

Then he told me a horrid tale.  The Rapidan is a stream in the north of the dominion, flowing into the Rappahannock on its south bank.  Two years past a family of French folk—­D’Aubigny was their name—­had made a home in a meadow by that stream and built a house and a strong stockade, for they were in dangerous nearness to the hills, and had no neighbours within forty miles.  They were gentlefolk of some substance, and had carved out of the wilderness a very pretty manor with orchards and flower gardens.  I had never been to the place, but I had heard the praise of it from dwellers on the Rappahannock.  No Indians came near them, and there they abode, happy in their solitude—­a husband and wife, three little children, two French servants, and a dozen negroes.

A week ago tragedy had come like a thunderbolt.  At night the stockade was broke, and the family woke from sleep to hear the war-whoop and see by the light of their blazing byres a band of painted savages.  It seems that no resistance was possible, and they were butchered like sheep.  The babes were pierced with stakes, the grown folk were scalped and tortured, and by sunrise in that peaceful clearing there was nothing but blood-stained ashes.

Word had come down the Rappahannock.  Ringan said he had heard it in Accomac, and had sailed to Sabine to make sure.  Men had ridden out from Stafford county, and found no more than a child’s toy and some bloody garments.

“Who did it?” I asked, with fury rising in my heart.