From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.  Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their cases as he drew rein.

“’Ware the wood!” he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop deploying into the road as to surround us.

“Now who are these?” I asked; “friends or foes?”

“Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart’s Tories—­the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight since.  Will your horse take that barricade, think you?”

“Aye,—­standing, if need be.”

“Then at them, in God’s name.  Charge!”

It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it.  I remembered my old field-marshal’s maxim, Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu zerschmettern; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did strike both first and hard.

A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.  In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer’s great pistols; and then we came to the steel.

It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay.  As we closed with the half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.

“Over with you!” I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him down with a great scythe handled as a sword.

Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for the race beyond.  When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.

There was no cost worth counting.  A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me, and the back of Jennifer’s sword hand scored lightly across by another of the random missiles summed up our woundings.  Dick whipped out his kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if any Tory cared to follow.

“Lord, Jack!  I owe you one to keep and one to pay back,” quoth my youngster, warmly.  “I never saw a swordsman till this day!”

“Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn them.  And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools.  The two with swords had little wit to use them.”

“Oh, come!” said he.  “I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.  If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach me some of these ‘mere tricks’ of yours.”

I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the distance.