“The papers have not been signed, thank God, Captain, and your very impatient lieutenant is being shown some Southern hospitality by the flower and chivalry of Old Harpeth.  And I beg your pardon for allowing you to be a prisoner a minute longer than necessary,” was the answer made to him by my Gouverneur Faulkner.  “Untie the Captain, Jim; he’s all right.  And you can bring us a little of your mountain dew while I clear this table here to use for the papers of our business.”  And still my Gouverneur Faulkner did not speak or look at me and in my heart I then knew that he never would.

“I will make all ready,” I said as I lifted a large gun, a horn of a beast full of powder and several pipes with tobacco, from the table of rough boards that stood under the window for light.

“Ah, that is a good release!  Thank you that you did not make tight enough for abrasions your cords, my good man,” said my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, as he stretched out his arms and then bent to make a rubbing of his ankle upon which had been the chain.

“I said you warn’t no revenue.  Here, drink, stranger!” answered the wild Jim as he handed a bottle of white liquid to my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, and also another to my Gouverneur Faulkner.  “That boy can suck the drippings,” he added as he looked at me with humor.

“Get cups and water, Jim,” commanded my Gouverneur Faulkner with a smile.  “Don’t drink it straight, Captain.  It will knock you down.”

“I will procure the cups and the water,” I said with rapidity, for I longed to leave that room for a few moments in which to shake from my eyes some of the tears that were making a mist before them.

“Git a fresh bucket from the spring up the gulch, Bob, while I go beat the boys outen the bushes with the news that they ain’t no revenue.  They’ll want to see Bill,” was the direction that wild Jim gave to me as he placed in my hand a rude bucket and pointed up the side of the hill of great steepness.  After so doing he descended around the rock by the path which we had ascended.

“What is it that you shall do now, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?” I wept a question to myself as I dipped that bucket into a clear pool and made ready to return to the hut.  “All is lost to you.

“I do not know,” I answered to myself.

And when I had made a safe return to the hut with a small portion of the water only remaining in the bucket, for the cause of many slides in the steep descent from the pool, I found my Gouverneur Faulkner and my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, engaged deeply in a mass of papers on the table between them and with no thanks to Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, when she served to them tin cups of the water and a liquid that I had ascertained by tasting to be of fire.  I believe it to be thus that in affairs of business, in the minds of men all women are become drowned.

“Will you write this out for His Excellency, my dear Mademoiselle?” would request my good Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles.