What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest space.  The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings, raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.  As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the yellings and a scattering fusillade in air.  Then the ring of horsemen narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and vanished as if by magic.

With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din, being as well terrified as they had a right to be.  But now the leader of the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees, the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the lady.

“The hoss-captain!” muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we did not need his word for it.  ’Twas but a child’s pebble-toss across the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.

“I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery,” said the baronet, mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and got them well by heart and letter-perfect.  “These slippery savages have given us a pretty chase, I do assure you.  But you are trembling yet, calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now.”

I was watching her intently as he spoke.  ’Twas now hard upon two months since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred, and the interval—­or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of the captive flight—­had changed her woefully.  Yet now, as when we had stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton’s court, I saw her pass from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful than ever.

“I thank you, Sir Francis—­for myself and for poor Jeanne,” she said.  “You have come to take us back to my father?”

He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.

“Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.  But what can I say?  We are upon the king’s business, as you well know, and our mission will not brook an hour’s delay—­indeed, we are here only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for theirs.  I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to the west; but I do assure you—­”

She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if only with a single soldier for a guard.