I gave her good morning, and was beginning in some formal fashion to thank her for her thoughtful care, when she cut me short.

“’Tis my bounden duty, sir,” she said, twanging once again upon that frayed string.  “You are my guest and my—­husband; though God knows I would you were neither.”

“Merci, Madame,” said I; stung so sharply that the retort would out in spite of everything.  “As once before, I am your poor misfortunate pensioner; but this time you are not less willing to give than I am to receive.”

She gave me a look that I could not fathom, and for a flitting instant I could have sworn there was a mocking smile a-lurk at the back of the beautiful eyes.  Then she went straight to the subject-matter of her errand, brushing aside the small passage at arms as if it had not been.

“You are in a most perilous situation, Captain Ireton; do you know it?  News of your presence in Charlotte has got abroad, and at this very moment Tarleton’s dragoons are making a house-to-house search for you.”

“So; some one has betrayed me?”

She nodded.

“Do you know who it was?”

She nodded again.

I considered of it for a little time, and then said:  “I must not be taken here.  Will your—­ah—­duty stretch the length of showing me an unwatched door?”

“There are no doors unwatched.  You must stay here till nightfall.”

“Nay, that I will not.  Will you tell me who it was set them on?”

“’Twas a man you hate—­and who hates you heartily in return.  He saw you come here last night; he knows you are here now—­or guesses it.”

I had no right to pry into her confidence as a thief would break into a house.  But I was loath to fight my battle in the dark if she, or any one, could give me light.

“His name, if you may give it, Mistress Margery.  It may point the way out of this coil.”

“’Tis Owen Pengarvin.  He was here last night when you came.”

Now I remembered the little man in black whom I had seen coming down the stair whilst I knocked at the door.  But this left me in a greater maze than ever.

“If he knows I am here, why does he let them search elsewhere?”

At this she looked away from me, and I made sure I saw the sweet chin quiver when she spoke.

“He has reasons of his own; reasons of—­of—­” but instead of telling me what they were she broke off to say:  “But now you know why all the doors of this house are under guard.”

“Truly,” said I; and therewith I fell to pacing up and down the narrow clear-way in the garret, striving to see how I might come off with nothing worse than the loss of my burdensome life.

’Twas easy to guess how this shaveling lawyer had discomfited me.  Forewarned is forearmed in any soldier camp; and through his blabbing, the plan by which I had hoped to lull resentment and forestall suspicion was nipped in the bud.  I saw the far-reaching consequences, and was made to know how a trapped rat will turn and fight in sheer desperation whilst the terrier is shaking him to death.