“Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?” I would say. “’Twill be risky enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to work in!”

He turned upon me like a pettish child.  “Oh, to the devil with your stumbling-blocks, John Ireton!  You are always for holding back.  By heaven!  I’ll swear you have no drop of lover’s blood in your veins!”

“So you have said before.  But let that pass, we must bide by our promise to Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in present peril.  Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we have the firelight to help.  When the time for action comes we must be able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be.  Come.”

’Twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp.  We had it; had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his lieutenant and another.  The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.  The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less to fear from him.

I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.

“I know Frank Falconnet better than you do, Jack, for I have known him later.  He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate with the liquor in him.  ’Tis lucky we are here.  If he do but drink deep enough, Margery is like to have need—­”

“Hist!” said I; “some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as they look.”

He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us out on the up-valley side of the encampment.  Here we could look down into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of the band were cropping the lush grass.  It was the sight of these, and of Margery’s black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering venture to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but now dissuaded Richard Jennifer.

“We shall need another mount, and Mistress Margery’s saddle,” I said.  “Lie you close here whilst I play the horse-thief on these reavers.”

But my dear lad was rash only for himself.  “Now who is daft?” he retorted.  “The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come through alive.”

“Mayhap,” I admitted.  “But yet—­”

He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an extinguisher.  One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.

I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man had walked fair upon us.  But Richard was quicker witted.

“Give me your sword!” he muttered; “mine will be too long to shorten upon,” and when the Englishman’s next stride would have kicked us out of hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by the collar and laid his sword’s point at his throat.