The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night.  Its course was toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba or the Broad.

“’Tis the Broad itself,” said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking; “and yit it ain’t; leastwise, it ain’t the one you know.  ’Tis the one the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch Broad.”

“But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright,” said I.

“So it do, so it do—­in gineral.  But hereabouts ’twill run all ways for Sunday, by spells.”

“If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege country, as I take it.”

“Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell.  I reckon ye’re a-needing that same pretty toler’ble bad, ain’t ye, little gal?” this last to Margery.

Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.

“I shall sleep well when we are out of danger.  But you must not stop for me, or for Jeanne, till ’tis safe to do so.”

“Safe?  Lord love ye, child! ‘safe’ is a word beyond us yit, and will be till we sot ye down on your daddy’s door-stone.  But we’ll make out to give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o’ sleep immejitly, if not sooner, now.”

So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came to help me ease Dick down.  The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever delirium had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.

“How did we come out of it, Jack?” he asked, when we had let him feel the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.

“As you see.  We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself.  You’re the heaviest loser.”

He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was with him.

“That remains to be seen, Jack.  If my dream comes true, I shall be the richest gainer.”

“What did you dream?”

He beckoned me to bend lower over him.  “I dreamed I was sore hurt, and that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me.”

“’Twas no dream,” I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for the breakfast cakes.

’Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg.  Suffice it to say that we ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and nights, during which Jennifer’s fever grew upon him steadily.