This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred we were together and measurably alone.

Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence.  But, womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.

“Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?” she said, bitterly; and then:  “How you must despise me!”

I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing the outlet of the sunken valley.  Now, as you have long since learned, my tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back smartly.

“You need not make the danger an excuse.  I will be still; and when I speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise you!”

“Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!” I protested. “’Tis my misfortune to be ever blundering.”

But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again throughout the passage perilous.

By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old borderer awaiting us.

“Ez I allow, we’ve smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,” he said, mixing metaphor, Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont.  Then he put a leg over his horse and gave the stirrup-word:  “From now on, old Jehu, the son o’ Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we’ve got to beat.  Get ye behind, Cap’n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch ’r so of your sword-p’int.”

Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered.  Down the valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses pick the way as they could.  But once beyond the ford, where the trace was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur, pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in the blind race.

I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long night-gallop through the darkness.  There was every chance for it.  The over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road.  Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the opener forest of the hill country.