“Ho! you devils without, there!  Here he is—­I have him!  Help!  Murder!”

The guard, a burly, bearded Darmstaedter, turned on his heel and stood at attention in the doorway, looking stolidly for his orders, not to the shrilling master of the house, but to the man who wore a uniform.

“’Tis naught,” I said, speaking in German.  “He mistakes me for a rittmeister of the rebels. Verstehen Sie?”

The soldier saluted, wheeled and vanished; and I sat down to wait till the old man’s outcry should pause for lack of breath.  When my chance came, I said: 

“Calm yourself, Mr. Stair.  You are in no present danger greater than that which you may bring upon yourself.  Blot out all the past, if you please, and consider me now as a member of Lord Cornwallis’s military family seeking quarters in your house by my Lord’s express command.”

“Quarters in my house?—­ye’re a damned rebel spy!” he cried.  “I’ll denounce ye to my Lord for what ye are.  Ho! ye rascals, I say!”

“Peace!” I commanded, sternly; “this is but child’s folly.  No man in the British army would arrest me at your behest.  Ring the bell and summon your factor lawyer.  I would have a word or two in private with both of you.”

He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great beads on his wrinkled forehead.

“D’ ye—­d’ ye mean to kill us both?” he gasped.

“Not if I can help it.  But some better understanding is needful, and we will have it here and now, once for all.  Will you ring, or shall I?”

He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him.  A grinning black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond giving the order, I gave it myself.

“Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly.  Tell him Mr. Stair wants him.”

There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came.  Being but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have fled when he saw me.  But I caught him by the collar and sent him scurrying around the table to keep his master company.

“Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at Appleby Hundred some weeks since?” I demanded.  “Speak out, and quickly.”

’Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap blindly in despair.

“You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you,” he gritted out.

“On your information?”

“On mine and Mr. Stair’s.”

“Ye lie!” shrieked the miser.  “I tell’t ye to keep hands off, ye bletherin’ little deevil, ye!”

“Never mind,” said I; “what’s done is done.  But it must be undone, and that swiftly and thoroughly.  Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to contradict you, and you are the only witnesses.  Knock together some story that will hold water and lose no time about it.  Do you understand?”