Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again.  In the act he turned, and then I saw his face—­saw and recognized it though nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of Richard Coverdale.

“So!” thought I.  “My time has come at last.”  And while I was yet turning over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot, and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my page here for you.

“Oh, come, Sir Frank! that’s too bad!” cried the younger of the twain; and then I took two strides to front him fairly.

“Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!” I said; and, lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell like an ox in the shambles.

III

IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST

True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.

After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his second’s defection; but of this Jennifer would say little.  He had broken with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one of Falconnet’s brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried shame at the baronet’s vile boast, was to serve in his stead.

It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink to one who breathes it.  On the left the road was overhung by the bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing.  On the right the river, late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of our horses there were none.  Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of nature’s morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the countryside.  Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.

“Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot tempest of ours,” he said.  “But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly.  The post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel Tarleton’s doings.  ’Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln’s reinforcements come too late.  They gave battle but faint-heartedly, being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and begged for quarter—­begged, and were cut down as they stood.”